The Muse of History
by aragonite
Summary: A Policeman's lot is not a happy one." Gilbert and Sullivan were smart to leave the policeman's wife out of the song. Clea Lestrade observes the Great Detective at work. This had best not interfere with the family vacation she schemed for...
1. Chapter 1

The Muse of History

_I enjoy watching my idols (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson of course) through the eyes of others. It forces me to think about them instead of just reading as if I were watching the adventures scroll before my eyes._

_That being said, I may be completely out of my mind to start up with something that involves, however indirectly, The Adventure of the Wisteria Lodge. It was dates 1892, a Hiatus year, but Baring-Gould pins it as 1894 so I believe I'm going with that number. It wasn't released until 1908 anyway._

_As time wore on, Holmes' attitude towards the police grew slightly more complimentary. Or at least, slightly less contemptible. Baynes is the only policeman in Canon to have outwitted Holmes, and Holmes was impressed by the man. In one brief encounter, he managed to give Baynes compliments no other policeman ever received. The era was changing, as Doyle's own private detective work was letting him soften his attitude to usual police procedure. _

_Also changing were some of the views in procedure among Scotland Yard._

-

Clea Lestrade didn't know _why_ it was, that unpleasant or otherwise momentous news always struck right around suppertime. Wasn't the world supposed to be slowing down and giving weary families their hard-earned time alone?

Once she made the mistake of complaining about that out loud, within earshot of her brothers.

"Good time to bother someone, Clea." Bartram grunted. "You know they got to be home then."

Clea stared, about to express her feelings about that form of rudeness, when she caught on that the remaining five of her brothers were in obvious agreement.

"I suppose I hadn't thought it all the way through, Bartram." Clea decided to drop the subject, and if there was a strained look in her eye, her brothers were too caught up in themselves to pay much notice. As usual.

Events transpired much later (and with greater than normal drama and fanfare for the Cheatham clan), that Clea was indirectly proven the reason for her complaint. The first six months of her marriage, she was certain her family thought Geoffrey was avoiding them.

While she couldn't fault Geoffrey for the urge (she herself experienced the need for familial exile before it turned into fratricide), she did feel poorly about the mess. After a ten-hour day at the Yard doing things Clea occasionally desired ignorance of, he would have just enough time to wash up and put on a clean suit before they could go out of the evening.

Clea didn't know if Geoffrey was some sort of magnet for strife, or if she had just been oblivious for most of her life (but she suspected it was a little of both). Either way, an ordinary evening out had decent odds of being anything but normal.

There was the spring gala at the Opera House, when the man collecting tickets at the window took one look at Geoffrey a hair before Geoffrey saw him. Whilst he was caught in the act of gulping for air, Geoffrey was lunging across the ropes and shouting for a Constable that Clea was willing to _swear_ she hadn't noticed in the crowd. At the least, it wasn't a complete loss of an evening; he missed the first part of the show but Geoffrey felt that was the usual fair outcome of telling a Director the man they just hired was a convicted murderer. They did get season tickets out of the mess, and Clea was disposed to feel better about the eight-shilling asset by the time they returned home.

A bit of an inconvenience, but also, a decent enough reward for the inconvenience. When she thought about it carefully, she decided a little bother in the beginning was like bread: It all turned out right for the extra attention. A good lesson, she decided. Good enough.

She did not know then, or ever, that the experience also planted seeds of thought in her mind, to slowly percolate until ready to come out.

Anyway, those thoughts would return later; much, much later, to bear interesting fruit.


	2. The Best Laid Plans

"I swear I won't!" Geoffrey was exclaiming over his necktie in the standing-mirror. Behind him like a covey of quail, two young boys hovered patiently with cufflinks and tie-pin. They were nearly as fully dressed as their father, but there was no sense in finishing up that set of mischief until they were ready to head out the door. "We're going straight to Nick's play, and then straight on to Martin's parade, and then straight on to home!"

"I still can't understand how this happened." Clea juggled the baby on her hip as she flipped out a clean handkerchief.

"Because we had to put each of our boys in a different school." Geoffrey reminded her. He paused to give his youngest son a glare, because the change in education had been his fault. "Schools are in competition with each other. One decides to have a dance on one day, I promise you the rival school down the street is going to schedule an apple-bob and a taffy pull!"

"I think Nick's school is better than mine." Martin grumbled under his breath.

"If you really want to find out, just _you_ go and stick a nest of natterjacks in the master's desk over the weekend, my fine young gentleman."

"I don't want to find out that badly, thank you." Martin said quickly.

"Good."

Martin grunted. Everyone knew he was privately grateful he didn't have to share his school with his brother any more, and no one was more grateful than the teachers themselves. They'd had Martin first, which gave them unrealistic expectations on the second Lestrade son. Nicholas was a decent enough boy in his own right, but of all the Cheathams in the family, only three had managed to finish school. It was clear Nick favoured his mother's blood in more than looks.

"Nicholas, where is your flute?"

Nicholas wordlessly pulled out the instrument in question from his waistcoat. It was polished to a gleam even a sailor would find no fault with. It was to his greatest dissatisfaction that the tin flageolet was keyed to D. "When can I have a Meg1, Tad?" He asked yet again.

"It depends on what your music teacher says, how well you continue to treat your old flute, and can you raise the money for a Meg?"

"Yes, sir…" Nicholas gave up for another four-and-twenty hours.

"Very well." Geoffrey slipped his cufflinks into his cuffs, shot his cuffs for good measure, and clipped his tie-pin. "Missus, I have no idea when I'll be returning your sons to you."

She passed him over his hat. "Just you see that all three of you get home. And make certain Martin keeps his muffler about his neck. I heard that cough he was trying to hide this morning!"

Few things could embarrass their oldest into good behavior like talking about him as though he was not there. Geoffrey flashed a quick smile and took his newly brushed hat from his wife.

"Mind your manners and do us proud, you scamps." Clea knelt inside her heavy skirts to give each boy a hug. They returned her embrace silently, as boys often do, but they smiled to have their mother's arms about them. _Little scamps_, she thought fondly. _But loving ones._

"I'll give you my lines tonight when I get home." Martin promised valiantly, as if Clea hadn't spent the last three months listening to his dogged rehearsal of _Sir Orfeo_.

"Thank you dear, but only if it's not too late for you to get your rest." She kissed them on their cheeks and rose to see them off. Geoffrey affectionately stroked their daughter's fine fringe of hair and a mostly-toothless smile was his reward.

"Mind you not lose your cufflinks—or your tie-pin!" Clea scolded. "It took ages to find a red stone to match your ring!"

"Speaking of…" Geoffrey muttered and dove back to the small box by the bed-shelf.

"It's right here!" Clea held up the small watch-chain.

He whirled and hurriedly fastened his watch in place. "I don't think I was this distracted before I was married." He commented in a mild sort of frantic awe.

"Women are distracting. Counting the maid, you now have four of us to think about."

"We're outnumbered." Martin blurted, for only now had it occurred to him.

"You always were good with the arithmetic." Nicholas pulled a good-natured face.

"Home by nine, barring human nature." Geoffrey promised, and it was a decent promise for a policeman.

-

Alone, Clea reveled in the evening to herself. She promptly kicked out of her soft house-slippers and curled up on the settee by the fire to play with the baby. Margaret was a tiny one, even allowing for the small stature of her parents, but there was a disturbing alertness to her deep brown eyes (Geoffrey's eyes at last), and a determination to the child that made Martin look like a bit of a sloth at that age.

She was a dainty babe, and most active. It wasn't long after the day of her tenth month on earth that she rose to her feet and walked tip-toe across the floor, then to the mixed relief of all, sat down and continued playing with her blocks.

"She's going to keep us hopping." Geoffrey observed with that wonderful understated Lestrade irony.

"Well, there's only the two of us, and two of the boys…Mrs. Collins and the maid...yes, we may be in trouble."

She received not a jot of sympathy from her father and brothers.

"_Like mother like daughter." Myron spoiled the atmosphere with a booming chuckle._

"_Off, fuss! I wasn't that bad of a baby!" Clea caught on that plenty of brothers and her only father were nodding in agreement to Myron's pronouncement. "I'm fairly certain if I was walking at ten months, I would have learnt it from you lot!"_

"_No, you didn't walk at ten months, dear girl," Her father agreed. Behind his thick beard his mouth twitched. "You walked at nine months, as I recall."_

"_Nine months?" She squeaked._

"_Yes…and you didn't even try to walk again for another two months…which was fine with all of us." Her gentle brother Robert rolled his eyes while his wife poked him in the ribs. "We needed every minute of that time to hide the valuables and breakables."_

"_Which I am certain," Elizabeth informed him tartly, "Lasted until you lot decided to use the dining-room for an exercise in furniture polo."_

"_It'd been raining a fortnight, dearest. Have pity."_

-

She missed the chance to be with her boys on their nights of triumph, but had to admit their daughter needed her more, and the boys were excited to be out with their father. Half a dozen cases of his inability to be there for them because of his work had been forgiven in a flash. They needed more time together.

1885 might have been the worst year in her marriage—and not out of any willfulness on her part or Geoffrey's, but 1895 was not turning out so well either. The expenses were all right—at least, they were tolerable. Geoffrey's savings for retirement had been close to two hundred pounds before meeting her—and the vague notion of his living long enough to actually spend it on staying off the street had been the goal. But with her and her collection of assets, he was by degrees resigning himself to retirement as "Clea's husband" for she was fast turning out to be one of the popular lights of the city. People flocked to her cooking school, which was a common name for the most uncommon training for young girls, and it was a mark of her success that young women of better backgrounds were actually taking on some of her classes—and paying what they both thought were astonishing prices for the training.

"_They're sending their daughters to finishing-school," Geoffrey observed over his plate, "for that matter, they can send their daughters to finishing-school while their sons are at Cambridge…and no one in the family knows how to dress a chicken?"_

"_I think they know the theory, love…but I also think it was my approach what sold them on taking classes." Clea waited for Geoffrey to wipe up with a piece of bread and offered him a fresh cup of tea._

"_What approach was that?"_

"'_How to get value out of one's servants,'" Clea recited the name of her new course wickedly. Long used to her antics, Geoffrey was able to swallow before he started laughing._

"_You're teaching them the arts of huswifery on the grounds that they'll know if their servants are cheating them or not?"_

"_Absolutely." Clea's Cheshire smile remained. "At least, that's what they think. A few weeks in the mind-set of their own servants, and I'll be dashed if I can't make them appreciate the ingenuity of their staff."_

"_It'd be miracle enough if you got them to raise the tea-leaf allottance." Geoffrey pointed out. "It's practically a secondary currency as it is."_

"_I wonder what they'll think when I work tailoring into the class?" Clea mused. _

"_Now, how are you going to do that, dear?"_

"_It's all a matter of economics. If I can get them to understand that a tailor is far happier when you give them at least a half-yard of extra cloth to work with, there's less chance of the man cabbaging the dress to clothe his own family. It's like a…like a gentleman's tip, only it would be a lady's tip."_

_Geoffrey shrugged with his eyebrows at that. "Never occurred to me not to treat my tailor properly. He might stab me through the heart with one of his pins."_

"_Geoffrey, I've heard that story for years and I'm sure that's not true."_

"_I'm sure you're right." Geoffrey agreed in unconvincing tones._

-

Of course, he was still holding out retirement as something to wish for; and he was trying hard not to die before the event. Not only would it go against his own personal plans, but there was the good chance his angry in-laws would take their tempers out on his tombstone.

"A policeman's wife is not a happy one," Clea murmured to herself, with a twist to her lips for the barest mention of the Pirates of Penzance was a guarantee of a policeman's spontaneous ulcer. "At least, when things go against plan, isn't that so, dear?" The baby smiled back at her. "Just you see, though. We're all going on a bit of a holiday as soon as the weather warms up. Out to the country to see your gran'feyther's hoary old estate…Your uncle Bartram will shoot a hundred rabbits and your poor mother will be trying to think of a hundred ways to serve up rabbit so it won't taste like rabbit after the fourth day…and knowing your brothers, they'll be bringing you stones and sticks and whatever it is they'll be finding on their trips to the shingle…" She laughed as Margaret's attention defected to the shiny bracelet about her wrist. "There you are, isn't it like a woman! Don't be getting false hopes on your mother's financial skill...I bought it at a rag-shop..."

Things were good, she thought. They might be stretched thin this year, but they would be able to get themselves straight out of London for a bit and so what if Bartram would saddle them with enough rabbit skins to swim in? There were ups and downs to all families. The bad times didn't last.

Clea was comforted by the rightness of her reasoning, and contented herself with playing with Margaret for the rest of the night until an excited Martin couldn't get his key in the front door and hammered on the wood instead. Their father was coming home in a stretcher.

_Fate has conspired against Clea's plans for the future._

_Fate does not know to whom she conspires against..._

_To be continued..._

1 A flute keyed for A. The first such pennywhistle or tin whistle to gain popularity in England.


	3. Home on his Shield

"Heavens!" Clea blurted at the door-step. At a glance into the night, she could assess the true nature of the evening: the sheer number of sheepish Constables and even more sheepish Inspectors was as loud as the monkey cage at the zoo. In the middle (and didn't they all look as though they'd like to pick him up and use him as a shield against her wrath), was her husband. He was lying on his back on the usual two-coats-and-scavenged-poles-from-somewhere police stretcher arrangement the men had created from Time Immemorial. Despite the fact that he was lying on top of a hard row of uncomfortable brass buttons in the middle, his right arm was bound up in a tight sling.

"H'lo, Clea." Geoffrey used his good hand as something that might have been a greeting. His eyes were overly bright. Roger Bradstreet's home-brewed anesthesia again.

"Roger Thomas Bradstreet, what happened to Geoffrey?" Clea's eyes slitted to something that resembled the snow-goggles on the Esquimaux tableau at the Museum.

"Clea, I'm right here." Geoffrey protested.

"I'm talking to Roger, dear. He hasn't the fortitude to sweeten it up. When my husband left this evening, it was to one son's theatre night, and the other's PARADE, Roger! Now you can tell me what happened, or shall I ask Mr. Gregson?"

"God, no," someone breathed in the back.

"I heard that, Constable Sweetwood!" Clea barked. She caught a flutter of movement in the back. "Mr. Householder, stand up straight! I'll not talk to a man who shuffles his feet and stares at the earth for inspiration!" Especially here with more horse-castings about than honest earth...

"It's like this, Clea," Roger stammered slightly, and blushed under his moustaches. "We were working with the Surrey Constabulary to pin down a few dangerous criminals—"

"They are always dangerous criminals!" Clea put her hands on her hips and shot sparks out of her eyes. "No one ever has a harmless criminal off the street!"

"Yes, you're right there," Bradstreet gulped hard while his best friend reclined on wool coats with a bland expression that barely betrayed his cynicism. "It was sheer accident that we ran into each other, Clea."

The boys had shed their battered coats and had enough of the warm indoors. They clustered about their father who was trying wearily to get up.

"Geoffrey, will any of this make sense?"

"I have no idea." Geoffrey confessed. When he turned his head a bruise the size of a Loire sweet rested on his forehead. "It doesn't make sense to me, and they made me repeat back the same explanation four times."

"We were making sure you weren't concussed, sir." PC Goodson popped up helpfully—and most bravely.

"Hmph, so you say." Geoffrey slowly rose to his feet. He swayed slightly and Bradstreet offered an arm. "So you're here…I take it someone was being forcefully extradited?"

"A few spies out of the Spanish Embassy." Roger confessed. "Remnants of the Tiger of San Pedro's faction. It was Inspector Baynes' case still, and Mr. Holmes felt they would be lodging under different names on Pall Mall…"

"Pall Mall?" Clea broke in. "Nicholas, that's where your parade went!"

"I'm all right, mother." Nicholas said proudly, before Martin jabbed him with an elbow. "But my flute's ruined." He pulled out a much-trodden and warped, flattened piece of tin with an expression to match. "Mr. Holmes stepped on it."

"Why did Mr. Holmes step on your flute?"

"I dropped it."

"He dropped it because I was yanking him off the street…those great booby Spanish-Dictatorship-fools lost their heads and ran straight through the parade!" Geoffrey scowled like a thundercloud. "They didn't get to the other side before outraged parents were whaling on all corners."

Clea made a grunting sound. "Is your arm broken, Geoffrey?"

"I'm afraid so. Dr. Watson said it was a greenstick fracture, but there's some strained tendons. That'll take time to heal."

Clea sighed. "Let's get you inside, Geoffrey. I want to see that arm—not that I don't trust Dr. Watson."

It was Mr. Holmes, she vowed, who would receive a bill in the mail on the morn about her son's damaged flute.

-

Inside the warm air of the building, Geoffrey winced; it felt uncomfortable to his bruise. Roger hovered behind, unasked, but he wasn't going to wait. Clea decided she could put him to work. "Roger, get me some lukewarm water, and I'll see to that vision of a sugarplum, dancing on his head."

Geoffrey couldn't keep from smiling at her witticism, but it hurt. "How's the kahz-bihan?"

"Sleeping like she ought…which is what her brothers will be doing once they clean themselves up. Boys, did you forget where the bath is?" Groans floated in the wake of the dismissal.

"You do that quite well." Geoffrey told her.

"Years of practice." Clea wrung out Roger's cloth and gently daubed at the swelling mark. "Looks like a lucky graze for you, Inspector. And here you were trying to stay out of trouble."

"More like trying to keep the boys out of trouble." He snorted.

"Now there's a venture to end in tears…noble, though." Clea shook her head and sighed. "Not too bad," she decided. "I've seen much worse."

"I _know_ you have."

Roger cleared his throat. "Will you be fit for work tomorrow?"

"You can't be serious!" Clea exclaimed. "Tendon damage and a greenstick?"

"I can write with my left." Geoffrey held out the hand in question. "Not splendidly, but if I take my time it ought to be all right…hopefully I can work with the typewriter."

"Did you take an anodyne?"

"Yes. That terrible bitter powder, Dr. Watson keeps in a paper twist."

Clea breathed relief. That was harmless enough stuff. "We'd best get you upstairs then…Roger, please do give Hazel my love."

-

Alone in the bedroom, Geoffrey breathed his relief and fell upon the bed in stages. "I saved the cufflinks." He said wearily. "And the watch-chain…and the tie-pin."

"I'm most pleased to hear that. But where's your hat?"

"Probably on top of some little street urchin." He rubbed at his brow with his good hand and breathed out, slowly. "It fell off when I was pulling Nick to the curb. That bloody fool…" He sighed again. "Saw the bobbies and lost his head…took off, nearly trampled that little Cowan boy—" His breath turned to a shudder. "Call the doctor tomorrow." He said unexpectedly. "Martin lost his muffler in the rush…he started coughing on the way home."

"He seemed fine just now."

"Didn't like the sound of it." Geoffrey told her. "Make sure, would you please?"

"Of course." She squeezed his hand and left the pressure there as he fell asleep.

And in the stillness of the house, she could hear a chilling sound coming out of the childers bedroom. The sound of a boy smothering a cough into his pillow.

One moment in the doorway with the lamp told her all. Martin had the pillow buried around his face while his brother quietly patted him on the back in the hopes of shaking loose the stuff in his lungs.

They looked up at her in the lamp-light, two boys, growing but still very young, and in the murky light…small and frail.

"Martin, Nick," Clea spoke as gently as she knew how, and felt better to see how they relaxed to hear it. "Let's get you downstairs with some hot lemon-water with honey. There's a bit of liquorice left; that ought to ease your cough until the morn."

"I'm not coughing." Nicholas protested feebly.

"Nor will you, if you take it as a preventative."

She was a full-grown woman, and a lady. Neither cried where their husband or children could see.

They went to the back room where no one could witness them first.

A few minutes later, Clea dried her face. She felt relief. The family vacation would be set-back, perhaps for the entire season. Patience was warranted for this situation. So…she would wait.

But first, she had a missive to whichever doctor was serving on the other side of Paddington Street. It wasn't Dr. Watson, but it would be closer, and if she suspected the truth in the deep notes of Martin's cough…they needed to save with a shorter cab to the nearest doctor.

And then she had a bill for Mr. Holmes. If he could afford to wear a silk hat, he ought to be able to recompense a boy's flute.


	4. In the Company of Misery

So, there it was. Martin not only had a cough, he'd been walking around with it for some time without anyone knowing about it.

"Pleural conditions are nasty." the doctor said. Less established than Dr. Watson, he was also more affordable to their budget after what happened to Geoffrey (Watson never charged a Yarder if they were injured in the line of duty and Holmes was involved, but they still faced weeks of reduced pay).

"How could he walk around at risk of pneumonia and not know it?" Clea asked suspiciously. Her reward was a complicated-sounding lecture that, if she picked out four words out of thirteen, seemed to mean that with the weather changes, the lungs reacted badly, and "dry" patches developed in the lungs which were prone to infection. "This should help rehydrate those lungs," the man finished with a flourish of the freshly-torn paper off his prescription note-book.

Clea thanked him with a slight glaze to her eye, ushered a miserable ten-year old back out on the street, and soon received a bottled concoction of pure vileness that made poor Martin feel as though he were "eating rotten chestnuts" and chasing it all down with harsh, thick syrups.

The combination was infernally inspired, but his recovery was slow even if his cough grew worse before it grew better. Clea began losing sleep after the second night, but Geoffrey, who wasn't sleeping anyway, would get up and see to him. They both might as well be miserable together, he reasoned practically, and it didn't take two hands to pour a medicine bottle. Out of pity he told Nicholas he could move to the spare bedroom if he wanted to get away from the nightly upset.

Out of brotherly loyalty, Nicholas refused.

"Now that's affection for you." She said over the breakfast table.

Geoffrey blinked over his teacup. "Mn?" He rasped. Bloodshot eyes tried to focus on her face.

"Never mind, dear." Clea sighed. If only Geoffrey wasn't out of commission too. And why did it have to be an injured _arm_ of all things? Arms were useful, but when they were injured they became worthless. It was impossible to rest at night. Lie on one's back, and the pressure from the muscle tugged at the tendons. Lie on the un-injured side, and the uneven distribution of weight created a dull throb. Lying on one's front was impossible. Sitting up at night was partially a possibility, but the back grew tired of having the arm folded over.

Clea had suffered a broken arm—once, decades ago in her green girlhood, and the memory was vivid enough that she made a point of not repeating that particular injury.

It gave her plenty of sympathy.

"Did you rest at all, love?" She ventured.

"Did you?" He mumbled. His face was in his cup.

"Geoffrey, _drink _your tea. If one needs a bath, they use the tub upstairs."

Geoffrey took a clumsy swallow, and put his cup down to wipe his mouth. He began a painfully slow attempt to butter the toast.

"Here. I don't know what's more frightening, Geoffrey," Clea took the task from him and dipped the knife into the salted Guernsey butter. "Watching you do that one-handed, or do it half-asleep." At least the butter-knife was dull.

"Thank you." He said blearily. Toast crunched. Thank God. Serious injuries could affect the appetite—she had a lifetime of tending injured brothers to vouch for that myth. "How's the little cat?"

"Geoffrey, you really need to start calling her something else besides that!" Despite herself, Clea was laughing. "She'll grow up thinking that is her name!"

"Better that than some of the names I was gifted with." Geoffrey appeared to be waking up. Slowly. "And what else are you going to call a baby who sounded like a kitten when she cried?"

"Oh, I don't know—her Christian name, perhaps?"

"Says the mother who has a pagan name for her Christian name."

"It isn't even that, Geoffrey. Remember? The clerk couldn't spell Clio."

"Splitting hairs." His side of the argument defaulted to surrender by a yawn just as the bell rang. "Blast…"

"Shush. Two of your childer are a-sleeping upstairs, and we have company." Clea was rising as she spoke, quickly brushing crumbs off her dress-front. Geoffrey smiled tiredly as she yanked on her pullover apron. Just as swiftly, Mrs. Collins was stepping to the door from…somewhere.

"I'll see to it, Mrs. Lestrade…"

"She was in the attic! How does she do that?" Clea whispered fiercely.

Her husband answered with a shrug. "I don't know, but she's been doing it for _years_."

"I wonder if she has a secret passageway..."

"If so, then it really is secret. I've had to paint that hallway four times since I moved here."

_"Oh, good-morning, Doctor…they're in the kitchen having breakfast. Come have yourself a cup of tea." You as well, gentlemen…?"_

"Gentlemen?" Geoffrey's eyes lost, for a moment, their abstracted and foggy look and was replaced by mild panic.

-

Clea had observed Mr. Holmes before, and usually as a tall, stick-armed gentleman in a frock coat despite most forms of the weather, with a voice that would be harsh and ringing were it not so carefully controlled.

She never failed to be impressed with his voice; it made her think of the overstated actors in her experience. Had they any wisdom, they would be taking lessons from her occasional patron of the kitchen-arts.

"Mrs. Lestrade," he was already doffing his hat; the other gentleman (she didn't know the third), followed suit. He _seemed _like a young, friendly sort. "I trust your family is recovering from their adventure?"

Clea needed but a split-second to remember she had yet to receive payment for Nick's squashed flute. "Hardly, Mr. Holmes." She responded with her usual tart humour. "Martin lost his muffler in the fuss and has been out of school with pneumonia, and Geoffrey's arm has yet to come out of the sling." _And Nick is without his music_, she thought with a private vow to bring the topic up, uninvited, if Mr. Holmes thought to leave without paying.

"Ah, which is why I am here, Mrs. Lestrade." Watson somehow gave the impression he was constantly tipping his hat to a lady when he spoke to her. "This is Dr. Albert Krume, a good friend of mine who specialises in bone-injuries."

Clea's personality was friendly, but she didn't always feel in the mood for a stranger to go poking at her family members. Still, she didn't have enough rudeness in her to say no. "Shall we bring you some tea first?" She asked formally.

-

Mr. Holmes was a distracting houseguest.

Clea struggled mightily as the visit wore on, but try as she might, 'distracting' was the most polite way she could have filed him.

Desperate to think of something better, she fell victim to her own internal distraction, which might have spared her a greater portion of the urge to be rude as the visit deteriorated.

To be fair—and Clea would give all their due—Mr. Holmes waited patiently throughout the first half-hour of the visit while the doctors poked, prodded, and asked Geoffrey the strangest questions. In the mean-time, Clea weighed the advantages of no smoking and Mr. Holmes' impatience with letting him smoke and them putting up with cleaning out the rooms later, and wordlessly produced the good ash-tray. Mr. Holmes flickered his surprise, and then gratitude before he sat in the window like a boy, knees drawn up to his chest, and soon produced a fair imitation of the stacks before Christmas.

"Have I what?" Geoffrey blurted, an eruption that brought her back to the present. Mr. Holmes pulled his pipe from his lips in interest. "Pick _what_ up? Are you mad? I couldn't pick up a _toothpick_ now if it was the closing clue to the Whitechapel Murders!"

"I am glad to hear you say so," Dr. Krume comforted. He'd managed—somehow—to talk Geoffrey into removing his sling and the bandages for the examination. Clea tried to think of something pleasant. The morass of bruises and mottlings under his sleeve was disturbing. One looked like a horse-shoe print.

Dr. Krume tried to be delicate and brief, but Geoffrey turned paler (as did Clea) while his arm was slowly manipulated within its range.

"I'm sorry I doubted you, John." Dr. Krume shook his head. "You're right. It really is a greenstick."

"I felt the same way." Dr. Watson confessed.

Clea gauged carefully. Mr. Holmes' patience was not infinite; he was twitching at the glass as it was. "You doubted he had a greenstick?" She queried.

"They're all but unheard of in grown adults…especially in older men who would be more likely to face the shattering of the bone."

"I wish it had. It would have hurt much less." Geoffrey grumbled under his breath.

"It is healing rather well, Mrs. Lestrade." Dr. Krume said helpfully. "Plenty of red meat and wine, eh?"

The Lestrades flashed arrow-quick glances at each other from their various vantages. It was occasionally charming how the finer sort of gentlemen assumed a person could afford such a diet…but in times like this it risked being deeply embarrassing.

As if, Clea thought in exasperation, one look at their rooms wasn't proof enough they hadn't money to squander…their décor was about eight years out of date and already used; the frames on the wall were of photographs, not paintings, and the floor wore druggets. The china belonged to her mother, so at least that was supposed to look old. She wondered if Mr. Holmes noticed they re-gilt the edges of the cups themselves.

She opened her mouth, on the verge of saying something (and knowing she could always be free to regret it later), but something about Mr. Holmes in the corner of her eye in the awkwardly-growing silence of the room gave her pause.

_He thought that was a silly thing to say too. _

So did Dr. Watson, for the faint blush in his cheeks.

"I come from a family of wrestlers, Dr. Krume." Clea fell back upon the old standby. "Our tradition is a bit…restrictive on how to treat an injured body." _Nothing heavy or too rich, for one. That would bind up the blood in no time. _

Dr. Krume looked interested, but also polite. "Well you have a fortunate husband, Mrs. Lestrade. If I am to judge by the force of the bruising, the fracture could have easily gone much worse."

"How much longer until I can return to work?" Geoffrey wasn't normally this blunt to a man in his own house, but he was tired down to his broken bones, weary of being in pain, and frustrated.

"I really couldn't say. I've never seen a man with this sort of fracture."

"You've never been anywhere near Lancashire." Clea pointed out. "We see this sort all the time at the Mills." She poured another cup of red tea to Geoffrey and passed it over.

"Perhaps I should." Dr. Krume used a voice of pleasant officiousness that was recognizable to all as a looming battle standard.

Clea made a note of it. Years down the road, she might still have the urge to crush him.

-

The rooms emptier by two, Geoffrey pivoted his head to glare at the detective by the window. "Dr. Watson was being kind when he used the word "friend," correct?" He wanted to know in _that_ sort of voice just as Dr. Watson came right back from the outdoors.

Dr. Watson sighed, his cheeks blushing slightly. "I've been trying to prove that man wrong for years. It all started when he expressed doubt on my experience with the India Bone-knitters…" He clipped his stethoscope into his bag with relief. "I'd mentioned your injury in passing, and then he learnt we were heading here and…"

"Rudely hitched a ride." Mr. Holmes cut in.

"If you call them rude, Mr. Holmes, then I shan't disagree with you." Clea said blandly as she poured a fresh round of tea. Dr. Watson paused as he wondered if she was being leading; Mr. Holmes smiled as he suspected it, and Geoffrey hid his face in his good hand because he knew it. "How may we help you?"


	5. All Politics, No Mercy

"Oh, before I forget." With a contented flourish, Dr. Watson pulled out a small coin-purse and put it on the table. To their blank expressions he explained with a tight smile: "I wagered the price of a consulting-fee that I was correct. Dr. Krume has a habit of never compensating the people he studies, but he does take credit for writing about them."

"Oh." Geoffrey leaned back in his chair. Manners forbade him from picking up the money before company, even though it had been explained as being his. That would wait until after the guests were gone.

"Lestrade, do you recall the features of the dubious gentleman who nearly trampled your son in the parade?" Mr. Holmes had risen and stepped to the fire to study the coals.

"Forg—" Geoffrey sputtered. "I should think not!" He exclaimed. "I still see his wretched face in my dreams!"

_Oh, good. He is sleeping then_. Clea paused to be thankful.

"Tall, dull black hair, combed back severely but you could see it was thinning; somewhat built along your lines, Mr. Holmes. His nose was small and had been broken at least once in the past for it bent to the left, and there was a wart on his left brow. He dressed like a gentleman, but there were no links to his sleeves, and a playing-card fell out of his breast-pocket when I hit him."

"I wasn't aware you hit him," Watson looked up from his little notebook. "There was no mention of it in Gregson's report."

"Try the part where he wrote, "Mr. Lestrade was surprised."…I had to break his direction somehow, and he was headed straight for Nick! He might have looked lean, but he was built like a plough-horse, and the next thing I know, he's trying to wrench my arm back and spitting some Spanish-sounding babble…" He shrugged with his good arm. "Probably doesn't mean anything."

"Actually, it does." Mr. Holmes answered in a tone as rude as his words. "It is in the details that the cases are solved. _Watson_!"

They were gone as fast as that. Clea was still holding a tea-cup in her hand, caught in the midst of offering the doctor a fresh splash.

In the silence of the room, Geoffrey struggled to settle deeper into his chair. "That's Mr. Holmes for you." He said at last. "You've never seen him in a professional aspect, have you?"

"He made me think of an actor." Clea confessed with a shred of guilt, for actors were not always the subject of polite conversation.

"Hah." Geoffrey laughed softly. "The first time I met him, I thought he was a lunatic."

"I feel for the poor doctor." Clea mused. "It can't be a simple matter to be his companion."

"Dr. Watson would have you think he's ordinary, but there's nothing ordinary about a man who can and will keep up with Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Geoffrey had succeeded in arranging the newspaper to his ability to read. Clea mixed him a watered brandy, and he took it without complaint. She tutted to herself when she picked up the little money-bag. "Worth a day's wage and we didn't have to do anything." She caught the twist of his lip. "Except endure," was her last-minute afterthought. Despite the newspaper in his lap, Geoffrey was sliding fast into sleep. Good for him. She left him as quietly as she could. The morning waited.

-

"Here you are, ladies." Clea stood at the front of the room, which was arranged as a kitchen. One side had the future maids and cooks, the other held the fine daughters. By lots each team had drawn a spokeswoman. "Miss Hartwell, before you stands your maid. What shall be your first orders of the day? You need to tally up your budget, see to the mail for your father, and what about the supper for tonight? He invited those fussy bankers from his club to come enjoy the evening…short notice! What _shall_ you do?"

These classes were truly becoming a success. Clea wasn't about to break down the barriers between the two—they were shelter for too many. What she wanted was an understanding.

Slowly, the maids were understanding that their employers gave strange orders out of ignorance or distraction from the demands of their station; and the ladies were learning that their staff was smart enough to do their job, but needed to know their employer was watching in approval.

Supported by shy smiles and self-aware giggles, the young girls, no older than twelve, began to learn to work as a team. The older girls watched, painlessly absorbing the mistakes of the children who could be gently corrected without hurt to their tender pride. Clea was certain to correct the little girls gently, even with humour, which was a good way to deal with adversity and set-back.

"Remember, ladies," Clea admonished with a smile, "one needn't correct one's employer directly to her face! What if she made an honest mistake? The burden of manners is upon you, just as it is a burden for your employee to be a good example."

-

Clea's throat was sore from all the talking when she left for the day. Rain dotted the air as she hurried for the pre-rented cab for Paddington. Martin would already be home; his school was just three streets from their house.

Alone with her back on the cushions, the little woman eased her weight off her feet and sighed, wishing for her comfortable slippers.

The Women's Liberation Army would be furious at her, but Clea had never felt good came of disorder. The entire reason why there were troubles between the poor and the rich rested in the lack of empathy each had for the other. And in too many cases, both sides lacked empathy for their ownselves. Small steps; baby steps. One didn't learn to walk just by thinking about it. They had to learn how to do for themselves, and hopefully, they would be aware of the finances of their house someday, without blindly accepting what their father, uncle, brother or husband was telling them. Clea knew too many stories…

-

The cab stopped her straight into the centre of a rain-puddle (the one the morning milk-men had been cultivating for some years as they quarreled in the dawn hours under the window). Clea hopped awkwardly, but of course mud had spattered the hem of her skirts by the time she reached the drier edge of the kerb.

Mrs. Collins' new maid, a girl hired directly from Clea's school, had been about to come out and shake the dust out of a throw. "Oh, Miss." She jumped slightly. "Mrs. Collins asked me to tell you to see her in the kitchen the moment you came in."

"She did? Thank you, Melissa." Clea quickly stepped to the coat-tree in the foyer and shook off her coat. Melissa ensured her hands were free of dust before offering aid. "And thank you again, Melissa."

"Not at all, Ma'am." Melissa responded with a slow smile. "Shall I set out an evening-gown? It ought to be much drier."

"Yes…an excellent idea, Melissa. I shall be up as soon as I've finished speaking with Mrs. Collins. Do inform Mr. Lestrade."

Clea hurried into the lower floor of the kitchen. It was a large room, almost ponderous compared to the small, high squares that created their living-spaces. Also unlike most of the house, this room was built of solid blocks of stone. It kept a slight coolness even in the summer, perfect for rising bread of keeping milk and cream.

"Ah, there you are, Mrs. Lestrade." The old (retired) dancer was standing on a stool to clip a branch of sweet herbs in the ceiling. Clea tried not to show fear at the sight, and went beneath her landlady, so she could catch her in case she fell. "I felt you should know. Mr. Gregson came by today to help Mr. Lestrade finish his paperwork."

Such a statement was too ordinary for Mrs. Collins. "What happened?" She asked though she half-suspected the truth.

Mrs. Collins reached up to touch her bun into place. "I am afraid his superiors are saying he does not warrant the lowered pay of an invalided officer. I thought you should know."

"Yes…" Clea took a deep breath. There it was. "It's because he was injured while off-duty, wasn't it?"

"My dear woman, I'm certain I wouldn't know. But it is as good an excuse as any."

"Excuse." Clea's voice was too flat and dull to let the sin of bitterness out. A lady was not bitter. They could be poignant and sharp and witty…but bitterness was for those who were no better than they should be. "That's a good enough word for the Home Office being short of money again, isn't it?"

-

The paperwork seemed innocuous at first; they wanted to know if Geoffrey was on-duty or not. Geoffrey responded somewhat sarcastically that of course, the Yard always brought their sons along to a raid; it aided in their disguises and at the same time taught one's children the value of not choosing a career in government espionage.

"This isn't my doing!" Inspector Gregson insisted wildly. "And if you use that response, you'll be lucky they don't find some reason for a medical discharge!"

"Oh, I know it." Geoffrey groaned and used his good hand to sit upright in the couch. "I'm just being a mouth." He grumbled. "Look, I don't care what they say; Johnson's in charge of the paperwork, and he doesn't believe in pulling out funds for policeman no matter _how_ they're injured."

Gregson made an ugly face. "You don't have to tell me. He's the one who decided it was _my_ fault I took pneumonia last year while in disguise for the CID."

"It wasn't your _disguise_ that gave it to you…it was your getting knocked into the Serpentine in February."

"I'm lucky I didn't catch a septic infection while I was at it…or cholera…" Gregson growled. "All right. I'll set up the paperwork…but you know he won't like it."

The men glanced up as she entered with a fresh tea-tray. Clea pretended she hadn't heard the entirety of the conversation down the hallway over the clink of china.

"Of course not." Geoffrey agreed wearily. "Might as well have a cup before you go."

Being a fellow Inspector, Gregson didn't expect—or want—the good china brought out. That meant thick cups of a proportion that satisfied a man, and didn't need milk in it first.1

Clea was a lady. She did not shudder at the amount of treacle Gregson put in his cup. Over the years, she'd grown accustomed to her husband's low-sweetening palate.

"I didn't know you missed compensation when you were ill, Mr. Gregson," she began the conversation as she passed warm ginger-bread across the table. Geoffrey took his with butter, and Gregson tried not to look askance at the sacrilege.

"Well, I didn't know either, Mrs. Lestrade…truth to tell." Gregson manfully took his ginger-bread plain and bit into the soft slice with relish. Clea was not timid with the ginger, which again appealed to a man's tastes. "The paperwork kept a-shuffling back and forth, and someone would ask one question, then another…and then I was in bed with mustard plasters, onion poultices and something the Missus fixed up that must have been Chinese garlic—worst stuff I've ever had to swill down in a soup."

"Garlic chases out illness." Clea reminded him.

"This was no ordinary garlic. This was something her strange cousins brought back from a trip…called them "wild leeks" but I note they were growing them in a gloomy patch of garden…burned me up. I must have reeked for a week."

"Ten days." Geoffrey correctly gently. "We had a pool."

Gregson looked hurt. "And no one let me in on it?"

Clea chuckled as she cleared her throat. "Despite it all, am I to believe Mr. Baynes collected his men?"

"More or less," was the odd answer. "Mr. Holmes was a help on that, I'll grant you." The big man sighed and traded a look of understanding with his rival. "He was going to come here and take your report, but I said no, no, I'll do it."

"I don't think I could swallow Baynes on top of everything else." Geoffrey said wearily. "And on second thought, I know I can't."

"He's an experience." Gregson agreed. At Clea's puzzlement he added: "It's not that the man is smug to your face about being smarter…it's just that he finds other ways of showing how much smarter he is."

"I don't like him." Geoffrey snapped. "I didn't like him before, but when you told me how he arrested that cook just to throw the real killers off…I knew I didn't like him."

Gregson only shook his head.

"He arrested a cook?" Clea exclaimed.

"Wanted to make the real killers he was on the wrong trail." Gregson supplied. "The man was a fright to look at—large mulatto with big teeth, acted like a cornered savage when he was arrested—one of the Constables nearly lost a thumb! But he was released when the real killers were caught."

"Good for the cook." Clea sniffed her disapproval. "What a dreadful experience for the man."

Geoffrey looked troubled for a moment. He passed the basket of baked goods down with his good hand, but winced slightly. "Hard enough for a man to find work if he looks different in any way…and he was so different as to be his own class."

"You saw his photograph then?" Gregson guessed. "True enough."

"Awful." Clea summarized.

Geoffrey sighed. "The lot of an ambitious man…Surrey's too small for a man like Baynes. He needs more to do, and soon…else he'll just go to seed and a man who has the drive to promote up has the drive to do better for himself at every chance."

"You have to watch out for the country inspectors." Gregson threw in. "They're under incredible pressure not to upset the gentry, and if the gentry's the one what caused a crime, then they also are expected to keep it discreet…discreet enough to perhaps overlook evidence. And they truly resent our presence on a case. We stay away whenever we can, for they tend to take the blame for everything that goes wrong, and I hate to say, the Yard is rather quick to get the credit for what good is gleaned."

"That's very frank of you, Mr. Gregson." Clea indirectly thanked his honesty.

"It's politics." Gregson sighed. "Just like what's at stake with your husband's income. Mercy or compassion hasn't a thing to do with it."

1 Fine china was so thin that straight, hot tea poured into the cup could crack it. The custom of putting a splash of milk in first (which cooled the tea) was created to solve the problem. Nowadays lush establishments pour concentrated tea and warm water in the cup separately.


	6. Perhaps This Is War

While the learned gentlemen of the Higher Lofts debated the pay of one of Scotland Yard's best, Martin re-descended into illness with a cough that was deep and sticky enough to strike terror into the heart of any parent—not to mention his only brother.

There was nothing for it. Clea regretfully cancelled their vacation and maintained the cooking-school, while Geoffrey collaborated with his first born in misery and Nicholas shared the misery by collecting his sick brother's lessons by visiting the school that had so gleefully expelled him.

Bartram's idea of sympathy washed ashore in the form of freshly killed rabbits, and Nicholas was soon drafted into helping his father prepare the skins. Clea only prayed thanks that her brother had legal shooting rights on the country property, and sent the majority of the meat to the school.

"If one of my girls learns how to make a rabbit not taste like a rabbit, I swear I'll name one of the classrooms after her!"

Geoffrey grinned at her. His arm was healing, to judge by the now-ferocious stings and itching sensations that were driving him half mad. He was likely grateful for the distraction of soak-tanning one-handed. "This lot is going to go to Mr. Root," he said. "Unless you want some set aside?"

"Leave me enough good skins for the baby. She could use something soft to play on."

-

Mr. Root examined the tanned skins and credited their account towards future winter coats for the sons. It lifted a slight bit of weight of Clea to think of it. Geoffrey was always trying to find some way to defray an expense somewhere, and he was as worried about winter as she was. Months away sounded all well and good, but one might as well predict God as the weather.

Clea would work herself to exhaustion and fall asleep…but her nerves were worried about poor Martin, and her worries were transferred to the least noises in the dead of night. They were her husband and son, sitting up by the fire, trying to get another dose of foul syrup into Martin's protesting throat.

"He does seem to be doing better." Geoffrey said at last. Nicholas was dosing into his groats, one last attempt to rest before school. "He fell asleep—deep asleep—and he's still asleep. Rest is what he needs."

"Amen." Nicholas mumbled.

Clea glanced at her son, then husband. "He ought not to go to school if he's this worn."

"I can go." Nicholas persisted stubbornly. His lower lip thrust out.

Geoffrey was not too tired to catch the signal. "What are you learning right now?"

"Oh, we're on sentence participles, and colour-mixing…Mr. Hereford has a telegraph-box he said we could take apart and put back together…" Nicholas abruptly swallowed. "And Mr. Victor said if I can't do better on my arithmetic I would have to sweep the classroom."

"You're missing two out of a hundred problems!" Clea protested, all fired to cause trouble, but Goeffrey's left hand shot up in a warning signal.

"Mr. Victor, is it?" He asked in a dangerous tone. "What exactly is he having fault with?"

"He says I'm using up too much paper and chalk on working out the problems."

"Hmn…I see." Geoffrey set aside his plate and rose. "I'll just walk with you to school, Nick."

Clea was sweeping up the dishes when a messenger-boy knocked on the door. He was flushed with the early morning air, and held a small bundle in his hands.

-

Martin Lestrade was sitting up in bed and dealing with his latest hour in Purgatory by hand-weaving yet another slew of string bags. His father had taught him the art, pointing out it was useful, didn't plague the mind, and he could always sell them on the street or to the grocer's.

His mother's angry heels upon the floor promised to be a distraction from his usefulness.

The door flew open with a bang, and if it had been knitting, Martin would have surely dropped a stitch.

"Martin, where does your brother keep his blessed music-papers?"

Martin squawked, and pointed to the corner-desk beside the window. "Left top, Mamm."

"Private consulting detective," his mother growled under her breath. Mrs. Collins' cat stopped lurking under the bed and jumped on to Martin's lap for support. Martin put the string down to stroke the beast. "I'll show him. Private consulting detective…"

"Mamm?" Martin squeaked. "Did Mr. Holmes pay for Nick's flute?"

"I'll say he did!" She spat. "That and then some…" She scurried through the papers like a blizzard, seized what she was looking for and held it up. "Hah." It was Nick's bill of sale for his poor flageolet. "I thought so!" She peered at the numbers at the bottom. "Well, we'll just see about this…" Small as she was, she had no difficulties sitting at her son's desk. "Not going to sit for this, no by heaven…"

"Mamm?" Martin's eyes were large as new turnips. "Is something wrong? Mr. Holmes did pay for the flute?"

"Overpaid, more like…I'll not have that under my roof." Clea clicked a nib into a pen and stabbed the inoffensive ink-well. "Could buy a slew of flutes for what he brought!" The depths of the insult scored into the paper and nearly into the wood of the desk. Martin winced to see the butchery. "High-handed, rude, odd-minded, barmy…" The paper screeched from friction as she ran out of ink. "…gormless…noddy…gradely …mardy…"

Martin silently translated the Lanky, and had to agree to some of the words his mother was throwing about, but not all. Not that he would say anything about it. He knew better.

He watched as his mother ripped the paper off the tablet and stamped down the steps. The downstairs-door creaked open. Faint yet carrying, he could hear her husky voice floating back up the stairwell: _"And you give that right back!"_

Martin sunk a bit lower into his pillow. He had a feeling he ought to keep his mouth shut about this…of all the times Tad had picked to leave the house…

-

**221B Baker Street:**

Dr. Watson paused in the middle of his sentence and only just managed to rip his handkerchief out of his sleeve with time to spare. The sneeze vibrated the glass of the nearby window.

Holmes had looked up just in time to witness the coordinated movement. "I never realised until now the advantages of keeping the handkerchief inside the sleeve," he noted. "It seemed but a military affectation, but now I see it is a source for instant relief."

"I'm so glad you noticed." Watson responded patiently. "I did try to go back to the civilian style, but one can reach these much swifter if they're in the sleeve." He sniffed once and went to the window. "_Now_ may I open the air in the room?" He wanted to know.

"Of course. I'm as well finished anyway." Holmes leaned back from the chemistry table that still birthed strange, acrid fumes so disagreeable to his fellow lodger's nostrils, and reached for his shag tobacco. There was not the least irony in his actions.

Watson grimaced and lifted the sash another inch. The air that flowed through was wet and smelled of the city, but it was an improvement.

"All's well that ends well, eh Watson?"

"Always, Holmes…but I can't see how you discerned the second aid was a double-spy for Don Murillo and the Italian government." Watson automatically checked his other sleeve to ensure the second handkerchief was still there. There was no telling if Holmes would return to his strange experiment.

"A man as venomous as the Tiger of San Pedro can hardly have more than one enemy, from more than one faction!" Holmes puffed strongly with his new pipe. "One of the men charged with being a spy was an alleged Monacan, in the employ of the Italian government. Other than his reputation at being a little too lucky with his cards, it was difficult to find a true description of his visual attributes."

"Ah." Watson sat down in his favourite chair and snapped his fingers together. "The man Lestrade blocked so strenuously…when he made "Spanish babble"…"

"It really _was_ Spanish babble. The man spoke _Occitan_, a French dialect descended from the Troubadour languages…Large portions of Italy and Spain speak it as well…for the region was once more centralised than it is now. I had the experience of the tongue when I was in Limousin one year…_Provencal_ is the most common name for it, but the linguistic purists prefer the former term."

Watson smiled wryly, seemed about on the verge of saying something, but then as Holmes watched, slowly dismissed the urge.

"You doubt a conclusion, Watson?"

"Not at all. I was merely thinking…how many dialects are spoken in France anyway?"

"It depends on one's personal definition, Watson. For example, Breton doesn't count at all, save as a foreign language. But there is the Oil, or Romantic, and the Basque at the fringe, which is related to the Occitan…Gascon, Norman-French, Jurassian…Picard, Alsace, which is more German than anything else…then of course the tongues of the Channel Islands, which has not been actual French territory for quite some time, but remains under English law by the Normandy Title even if half the members of Parliament wouldn't know how to speak it…if you want to go back far into the history, one could even add Irish Gaelic to the mix, for there was some contribution of the Irish about…fifteen-hundred years ago."

"Hence my peculiar expression, Holmes." Watson was unable to keep from smiling. "Because France only recognizes one language in France."

Holmes needed a moment to grasp, and he laughed out loud.

"I still can't understand what the fuss is about." Watson persisted. "It is perfectly reasonable to speak one language at home, and another outside. Many parts of England practice that custom. We are all _English_ in the end."

"Too fair-minded, I fear…" Holmes' words halted as someone hammered at the door. "Well." He rose to peer through the now rainy curtain. "The boy can't have gotten lost on the way to Paddington!"

Mrs. Hudson soon ascended; she had cake-flour on her person and smelled of the hot ovens downstairs. Without a word she pressed the message into Holmes' hands and returned to her downstairs lair.

"I believe she may still be annoyed with you, Holmes," Watson observed _sotto voce_.

Holmes quite forgot about it. He was reading the letter with swiftly-winging eyebrows. Watson could see lamp-light gleaming through the angry holes in the paper.

"Dear me." The detective said at last.


	7. Fireworks in the Forecast

"Troubling news, Holmes?"

"Merely unexpected." Holmes dismissed it with a shrug. "The peculiarities of women! I merely compensated young Mr. Lestrade for the loss of his flute. She seems to feel that I have over-paid and to judge by the sere nature of her wording as well as the force used to engrave said wording upon paper…she feels some sort of insult."

Watson blinked. "I see. How much did you overpay?"

Holmes gestured like a stork, about to put the whole matter out of his mind at the earliest opportunity. "I merely guessed, Watson. Obviously I was in error to the advantage." He put the paper down, and sketched a quick response. A quick ring of the bell, a quicker instruction with the tip, and the note was on its way.

"That should be enough to satisfy even the most difficult of women," the Great Detective muttered under his breath.

"Why, Holmes?" Watson wondered with a sudden attack of his rare foresight. "What did you say to her?"

"Nothing at all, Watson. I merely apologised for my error. Tell a woman they are in the right, and they stop their complaint instantly."

Watson wasn't completely certain of that. The vaunted elephant of fable had been without question, female. He'd known that long before his marriage, and was prepared for it to be that way should he ever be re-blessed in his happiness.

Besides, Holmes' study of mankind was most comfortable with _man_. Womankind was a much more dangerous field to his cold, logical brain and Watson had to admit, the terrain was fraught with dangers. Holmes' idea of an apology might or might not go the way it was intended.

"Speaking of out latest adventure, Watson, will this be a case for your publishing?"

Watson was so long in answering that Holmes felt his innocent question had fallen quite flat. For his part, Watson was taken aback that Holmes even felt like mentioning it.

"I cannot say at this point," was the slow response. "My publisher had a most negative and strong reaction to the summary."

Holmes' question had initially been to distract Watson from his troublesome worrying. The answer surprised him into his own distraction. He returned his pipe to his lips for a few puffs.

"If they reacted to your romaniticised story-telling, I might be forced to agree. But how the Devil could they find fault with the summary?"

"I made the mistake of mentioning the rituals of the cook." Watson spoke with the most patent reluctance. "I was informed in no uncertain terms that such things did not and _could_ not exist in this modern age."

Holmes pursed his lips, surprised thrice within half and hour. It was not a particularly pleasing sensation, and it only seemed to grow worse with each repetition.

"I shall write it regardless," Watson continued carefully, "But I do not expect to publish it any time soon." He tapped the table with his pencil in thought. "Perhaps I am just too ahead of my time in the theme," he added. "I tried looking for reference to the rituals, but all I could find in the British Library was a book published but a year ago."1

As Holmes watched, Watson shrugged off the disappointment with a low laugh. "That is but one of the many hazards of your profession, Holmes. To encounter worlds undreamt of, and outside the realm of a few imaginations."

-

Dear Mrs. Lestrade:

Please accept my apologies for being in error.

I merely over-estimated the price of a flute.

S.H.

Clea's lips set tightly into her face at the note. Several ripe invectives fluttered in her head like the wind and she stuffed the paper into her apron-pocket as Geoffrey came in.

"You look better," she observed as he tossed his bowler into the coat-tree and shrugged out of his coat. The shoulder muscles were healing first, which gave him a bit more mobility.

"How could I not? It's been ages since I've been outside longer than the news-stand." He sighed. "I believe I have it straightened out with Mr. Victor. He wasn't actually looking at Martin's practice sheets. He didn't realise he was dropping his 9's to add up the rows."2

"Calls himself a teacher of arithmetic." Clea sniffed.

"I don't think he was originally a teacher of arithmetic." Geoffrey ventured. "Most of the books in his office were about…physical fitness and things about the heart-muscle."

"Good to see you're still observant when off-duty." Clea stretched to give him a kiss.

"Just practicing for when they'll let me back." He kissed her back. "Nevertheless, I think I'll be making certain to his abacus." He winced as he managed to get his coat up, but Clea didn't stop him, knowing how important it was to be able to do something.

"Would you mind seeing if Martin wants another drink?" Clea had lifted Margaret to her shoulder. The child was wanting to walk again, and on her tip-toes. "I'm worried that he's going to dry out in that stuffy room."

"Will do, dear…"

Clea hummed to herself. She was beginning to feel better. Margaret wobbled a bit on the carpet, and displayed a shocking glimpse of teeth just burgeoning under the gum-line. Her mother was taken aback; all this time they'd been waiting for one to show up, and now two…three…was that four? Was emerging? Dear heavens. They were in for a show soon!

"Goat's milk for you, my little elf." She tickled the tiny chin. "And oatmeal…with a bit of sweet cream."

"Clea??!"

Geoffrey rarely raised his voice in the house—sound traveled well.

"Yes?"

"What's this about Mr. Holmes paying for Nick's flute?"

"Hmph!" Clea waited for Geoffrey to come back down stairs. He tried to move in a way that didn't jostle his aching arm. "I'll say he paid for it! Over twenty times what the thing was worth!"

"Tw—" Geoffrey stopped. He thought a moment, and winced, putting his hand to his head. "Well, the man plays a Stradivarius, and if I remember right, he has another one almost as pricey! Probably never occurred to him it wasn't worth a pound!"

"Dearest, it is a pennywhistle. A _pennywhistle_. Pennywhistles are so named because they used to be a whole penny, though it's gone up _slightly_ since then…and before that, they were called ha'penny whistles!" Clea's teeth glinted through her lips. "Megs for short, as you might recall."

Geoffrey knew better, but he defended Mr. Holmes anyway. "He probably just didn't know, dear. He might be eating at Simpson's whenever he feels like it, and Marcini on the week-end, but when I first knew him, he was living on Montague Street in the cross-hairs of a war between rats and roaches!

Clea paused. "I fail to see the point."

"He was living in those digs because it was more important to build up his library-subscriptions and foul chemical collections. My point is, he absorbs and sacrifices for everything he can that has to do with his career, which is privateering detection, if you ask me—but I don't think anyone in his personal history has ever asked him to deal with a lost, stolen, or damaged pennywhistle." Geoffrey flinched as a sore thought struck him. "Unlike any of us," he added to himself.

Clea knew well just how much of her husband's job had to do with sheer ridiculousness, such as stolen photo-albums, madmen who sliced up umbrellas when the owners weren't looking, childish pranks, laundry-thieves, and complaints in the nature of, 'there are too many Urchins on my street, can't you police arrest them?" The one underlying and never-empty source of envy the detectives had against Mr. Holmes was the fact that he had the luxury of being able to pick and choose the cases he wanted…and he could actually turn down a person regardless of birth, connections, or their ability to ruin your career in a fit of pique.

Give a policeman the choice between a pay raise, a promotion, or the power to turn down a fool, and they would probably struggle with their conscience for quite a while before they gave you an answer.

"You're saying he's a smart man, but…limited." Clea fished about.

Geoffrey's shoulders drooped with relief. "Yes. He's a Jemmy, and he does a lot of work for us without taking so much as the credit—well, publicly," that last was added sourly. "He has his ways of taking credit for his work later…" He shook himself. "In truth, he's got his limitations like anyone else, only…they aren't limitations just like anyone else."

"I still can't see how he would think a pennywhistle would be worth a pound!"

"Dear, Mr. Holmes still thinks the American States will come back to the British flag someday, and if I told you his views about the Cornish language, you'd be asking me why I haven't done my duty and called Bedlam." Geoffrey shuddered like a cat suddenly drenched with dirty water.

Clea rolled this over in her mind a few times while Geoffrey discovered the pot of special tea she kept on the stand for his consumption. For a minute there was no other sound save that of his drinking another serving of knitbone, boneset, and Wolf's-milk3 steeped in rosehips.

"I found another pot of that chestnut-honey." She said absently. "You take a spoonful before bed."

"I'll need more than that to keep this down."

"Well." Clea said at last, "I don't like feeling the unthinking and slightly high-handed generosity, but I sent him the remainder back. That ought to finish it."

Geoffrey quickly grabbed up a cloth from the side-board and daubed up the tea on his face. "You sent him the remainder?" He swallowed hard.

"Why, yes. I had to even it out, you know. Is something wrong?"

Geoffrey was clearly weighing several potential answers, but as she watched, he discarded them one by one.

"I would have kept it and found a use for it--like a charity, but...Probably not, love." He said at last. The last person to "send back" something Mr. Holmes had sent had reason to regret it.

"Are you certain?"

Another pause. "He's a bit daft, but he is a gentleman…I doubt he'd argue with a lady."

Especially this one, he thought. On the other hand, there were a few advantages to having a thorn like Mr. Holmes in one's life…the man was so logical and cold he wouldn't blame a certain professional detective for any fireworks erupting between himself and said detective's wife…

_1 Leslie S. Klinger argues convincingly that The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (Published originally in two parts as "The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles" and "The Tiger of San Pedro" is the first __literary mention of voodoo. A book was referenced by Mr. Klinger as being on the topic in 1893 in the British Museum, but the book was not mentioned. It was not, however, the fictitious title Holmes referred to: "Voodooism and the Negroid Religion"_

_2 An Arabic trick to add the numbers of a problem together, dropping the 9's, and seeing if the total is the same as that of the original problem. While it sounds complicated, it was a simple way of re-checking one's problems with a little practice._

_3 Comfrey, Eupatorium, and Solomon's Seal_


	8. Bustarella

_Dear Mr. Holmes_

_Apology accepted._

_Your return of the remainder is not._

_Mrs. Clea Lestrade._

-

Watson entered their shared rooms with the idea of breakfast—not to the sight of Sherlock Holmes transfixing a particular piece of correspondence to the mantle-piece with his jack-knife. There was an unusual force to the effort that the doctor felt excessive for the necessary physics.

"Unpleasant news, Holmes?" He asked just as Mrs. Hudson came up behind him with the breakfast tray; the two shared a good-morning smile and Watson graciously took it from her hands with sincere thanks. She left smiling.

Holmes missed the small drama acted out. He threw himself into his favourite chair and reached for his collection of yesterday's tobacco to throw into the dreaded first pipe. Watson decided it was now or never; he threw himself into the first meal of the day. Long experience taught him the following: Holmes' energy would either have them out on the street in a quarter-hour, or the detective would be in a rampaging Black Mood from whence food would be a difficult topic, and at any rate, food would not be so palatable once the tobacco struck the atmosphere.

"What bricks can be made with such clay!" Holmes exclaimed.

Watson sliced through a length of sausage at record speed, and peered at the stationary still wavering on its impalement. "Is that Mrs. Lestrade's acknowledgement of your apology, Holmes?"

"It is her fresh salvo in a war I had not known I had declared!" Holmes struck the match with enough force to snap it, and puffed furiously to pull the flame into the leaf before his fingers were burnt. Watson admired the coordination required. The spent twig sailed into the grate, and Holmes relaxed…marginally.

"If she thinks this is the end of it…" Watson caught the under-thrown mutter as he turned to his mushrooms. "I'll not have my sense of fairness attacked in such a way. As if I do not demonstrate my sense of fairness by allowing the police to take credit for the overwhelming majority of the cases…"

And Watson had a fresh sense of trouble.

Holmes puffed like a Hammersmith train in sore need of boiler-repair, his scowl alleviated by the strange sight of Watson rising from his breakfast to open the window. The strangeness continued as his friend leaned his head completely out the sash, looked both ways across the street, and, seemingly not satisfied, withdrew his head and turned to the library-table where he pulled out the little gardener's almanac by the clock.

"Watson, whatever are you doing?"

"Checking out the weather, Holmes."

"Normally I see you consulting your old wounds for the weather, old friend."

"Merely checking to see the…long-term, Holmes." Watson scrubbed at his moustache, sighed, and returned the book in favour of his breakfast. "Do have some of Mrs. Hudson's fare, Holmes. Her double-yolked eggs are excellent this morning."

-

_Dear Mrs. Lestrade._

_No offense was intended._

_Accept the remainder in the spirit in which it was offered._

_--S. H._

-

Later, Watson went downstairs to see how the maid was doing.

"Well enough, Dr. Watson, but I declare I don't know what to do in the future!" The older woman lifted her hands in the air. "Shall I place to the Agency that I need a girl who is "not allergic to unknown substances" from his experiments?"

"He is temporarily moving to Inorganic Chemistry, so I hope that will be a relief to all of us," he said with a smile. "That is, once he ceases being distracted from this latest difficulty with Mrs. Lestrade."

Mrs. Hudson gave him a knowing look. "I shouldn't be surprised that he is in difficulties," she answered. "Up until now, I am the only woman in his experience who has not come to him for help, wept, lied, or begged him to solve a terrible problem."

"And you know, that might be the sum of it." Her least-troublesome lodger answered thoughtfully. "I fear his natural discomfort around the gentler sex has been slowly enforced by his own clienteles."

"Well, little as I know of Mrs. Lestrade, I feel I know enough." Mrs. Hudson managed to smile over what would have been a sniff of disapproval. "If she needed something, there would be no question about it." A low chuckle escaped. "It was a simple thing to pay that boy back for his flute, and she didn't expect anything else."

"Very true…" Watson frowned as a sudden thought struck him. "I wonder…"

The door flew open and Holmes was racketing down the steps to the door. They moved out of the way just in time. With a tug the door was flung open as easily as balsa wood and a messenger boy, caught in the act of knocking, cowered backwards.

"You have something for me, my good fellow?"

The messenger took a single look at Holmes, came to a decision, pushed a packet into his hands and took off running.

"That is not an encouraging sign—_and she did send the remainder back_!" The last was said in rising tones.

Watson sighed. "I'll see to this." He resigned.

Mrs. Hudson shook her head. "You think so, Doctor?"

"Mrs. Lestrade must have been detained at work today." Holmes said darkly. "Her response was nearly six hours late!"

Heart sinking for the fate of future relationships in London, Watson peered.

-

_Dear Mr. Holmes._

_I am not destitute enough to accept a gift in such a spirit, no_

_matter how long Mr. Lestrade remains out of work and _

_on docked pay. _

_If you insist, however, I can use the remainder in paying _

_the messenger between us and can feel some good _

_will come of this bustarella_

_--Mrs. L._

Watson knew the battle would get ugly from this point. When a woman like Mrs. Lestrade built up enough torque to her engine, the resulting friction-sparks would burn unsuspecting mortal flesh.

For his part, Holmes blinked. He was taken aback for a fraction of a moment.

"Holmes, I think perhaps you should just accept the remainder." Watson cleared his throat. "It would appear to be a simple way of assuaging the woman."

"I have done nothing wrong!" Holmes remained indignant. Watson was beginning to admire his friend's dauntless courage. "Since you are the expert in the fair sex—" Something about his tone of voice suggested a dark irony to "fair"—"I would most appreciate your perspective."

Put on the tightrope, Watson loosened his collar with a finger while London kicked up the dust around them. "Holmes, money is never a couth subject even in the best of times…and I for one do my best to avoid it as much as possible. The less one mentions it, the less one is likely to…come to…" his voice cracked slightly "…misunderstanding." Holmes did not look convinced. "A mother should not be seen as a woman, Holmes. The ideal is something akin to a lioness or a she-bear…" the earlier thought re-surfaced. "Perhaps she thinks that your over-payment for the flute is a gesture toward her husband's enforced convalescence. After all, it was no one's design that he would be there that night."

"Nor was it anyone's design that a parade of children singing Elizabethan songs be walking down the street on that night!" But Holmes relented slightly. The problem had been given a new perspective. It was a relief. "Gregson told me he had hope of convincing the Home Office to allow him convalescent leave."

"It really isn't that much to live on," Watson blushed. "I thought it would be enough once, before I started working for them on occasional jobs. I could soon see it wasn't. One might as well call it a stipend. I'm glad I never had to ask for it…" Holmes was staring at him. "The problem," Watson cleared his throat, "is all the applications go through a man known for his lack of imagination, compassion, or pity. He sees only numbers, and to him, the concept of paying a policeman to be idle in the line of duty is intolerable."

"Yes, Johnson…I've heard complaints about him before." Holmes stared at the paper with a scowl. "It would seem he is growing worse in his old age."

Watson opened his mouth—then shut it.

"Yes?" Holmes cocked his eyebrow up knowingly. "Some interesting gossip fall your way?"

"I don't know if it's true or not…but the policemen I treat complain that the older one is, the harder it is to get pay…perhaps an encouragement to take early retirement?"

Holmes was silent for all of five seconds, thinking as swiftly as the cart-wheels passing them by. "Another rumor known to me, but perhaps it isn't a rumour." He stared out at the street. "I can't imagine Lestrade retiring, to be honest. He's practically become a part of the Yard."

"Well, there's the problem." Watson sighed. "But Holmes, there is something that worries me." Watson was not about to say Holmes was the actual source of the worry. "Mrs. Lestrade used the word bustarella. That is not a common word for a woman…"

"Of course not. It was originally the Italian word for a little gift in politics, and now means an unclean bribe!"

"There you are...but from what I know of the good woman, she knows exactly what she is saying, and she is employing _both_ definitions."

Holmes considered that, with the faintest of smiles on his face. "She does give me that impression."

"And if she used that word…she is allowing you a graceful means of escape from this mess."

There it was. Holmes' grey eye lit with the challenge. Seconds later, something must have struck flint, for sparks emerged, and with a final "Hah!" He was running back up the stairs.

Watson didn't consider _that_ a particularly good sign, either.


	9. Peace Talks

Parlay

Lestrade was out on the street again. He felt like a boy escaping school and calculus. It was bliss. London swirled around him, and he didn't even care that he was at risk for another jostling of his arm. He clocked into New Scotland Yard with the breeze and managed to wrestle his typewriter to submission by the time a few well-wishers trickled in.

"That's quite a trick," a familiar voice caused him to jump nearly out of his stockings.

The little man clutched at his chest with his left hand, breathing out and sparing a single look of amused disdain at the grinning doctor. "I can tie my shoe-laces with one hand too."

"You're joking." Dr. Watson protested.

"Doctor…think back to how long I've been convalescing…"

Watson shook his head ruefully. "I shan't." With a nod of permission, he hung his slightly dusty bowler on the rack behind the door. "I thought I would see how you were doing, but your marvelous landlady sent me packing in this direction."

"She can be a bit protective at times," Lestrade admitted.

"Which is absurd," Inspector Morton thought to throw into the still-open doorway. "What the devil do you need protecting from anyway, Lestrade? Last I heard, the dragons'us all flushed out of the Thames!"

"I see everyone took a class in witticisms while I was away…" Lestrade scowled briefly. "What can I do for you, Doctor? Produce my arm? I don't feel like trying to stand on my head or anything drastic just yet."

"Which is just as well." Watson pilfered a chair from the hallway before someone could miss it, and soon was gently moving the little man's freed arm. "Everything going well?"

Lestrade opened his mouth, but left it hanging open as words magically failed to create themselves. He caught Watson's eye and both men sighed. Lestrade sounded just like a married man, and Watson exhaled in that particular way a translator might upon faced with a complex problem too early in the day.

"I hope we survive this." Lestrade spoke seriously enough, and the thread of humour was not quite enough to discount the genuine worry. Holmes was not someone to lightly tangle with. To be honest, Lestrade never wanted to try.

"Holmes is now seeing this as a puzzle to solve." Watson offered.

"Oh…oh, dear." Lestrade found his mouth devoid of moisture. "Women aren't puzzles, Doctor! They're mysterious, but not the kind of mysterious that means they should be ciphered!"

"You needn't explain that to me, Friend!" Watson slowly returned the arm to the sling. Lestrade grimaced at his offending limb. "Not at all! How is the good Mrs. Lestrade?"

Lestrade needed a moment to collect his thoughts. He bought time by striking a match, one-handed, to a small cigar. "I'm afraid Mr. Holmes' generosity came at a bad time," he said at last. "In another time she might have just laughed it off."

"Ah. She struck me as a remarkably reasonable woman."

"Reason's got nothing to do with it! She's been returning to her duties at the school, easing off on her time with the little one, and I'm afraid she had her hopes pinned rather high on a family outing with her kin. In one fell swoop I'm down with a bent wing, Martin's coughing hard enough to frighten the Grim Reaper away, the baby starts cutting four blessed teeth at once—does that happen much?" Watson shook his head quickly, no. "Well, that's a relief. It made me want to re-evaluate some of the folks we've committed in the past…anyway, Nick's flute wasn't so much the problem as much as she was worried about our finances, and with the ah…with the timing of Mr. Holmes' delivery of a pound…"

"Heavens." Watson saw it all too clearly. "Mrs. Lestrade may have thought Holmes was aware of the straits…and thought a pound would be enough to…"

"Don't get me wrong. It isn't a bad compensation…not to me. I've been given gratitude or restitution in everything from coin to vegetable-seeds, to sewing needles, a basket of potatoes, a box of Christmas tree ornaments, and one memorable Boxing Day, some wag gave me shares in the Alpine Shoe Company." He stared into the distance in brief wonder. "Wish I knew who did that," he added. "The shares are actually gaining some value."

"Congratulations." Watson told him. "Those are the highest-quality footwear I know of."

"Yes…in another five years I might be able to afford my own pair." Lestrade growled. "The point of it all is…Mrs. Lestrade might have, perhaps, an overblown sense of Mr. Holmes' abilities, and in which case, she would be placing her husband a bit higher than the imagined price of the mess."

Watson's mouth twitched. "Holmes is far from omnipresent, and he would be the first person to say so."

"Yes, well…" Lestrade chose not to make issue of that statement. "Every popular man has a few myths attached to him…" He coughed slightly.

"Lestrade, would you happen to have any suggestions as to how Holmes might solve this to everyone's satisfaction?"

"There isn't everyone…there's just my wife, and she is quite enough!" Lestrade rubbed at a tic forming on his brow.

"Isn't there anything?" Watson persisted.

Lestrade spared Watson a rare expression. It was a rich blend of compassion and pity.

"At least there isn't a full moon." Watson said at last. "It does affect the mood and faculties. I've seen the proof of it."

Lestrade only sighed. "I don't think Mr. Holmes realises his worst enemy right now is his persistence. Every time he sends another communication back, it gets her angrier than ever."

"I don't think anyone ever accused Holmes of not being persistent."

"No…no…not at all." Lestrade was quick to assure him. "But…you have to understand, from my view—which is slanted, I'll grant you—my wife is not known for not being persistent either."

"True." Watson searched for something encouraging. "Well…perhaps this will burn itself out on its own flame…victory to the person who cares the least about getting the last word?"

Lestrade only looked glum. "And to whom," he wanted to know, "would you lay the odds?"

Watson didn't give up easily either. "This is partly his lack of experience with women, Inspector. As our good landlady pointed out just this morning, Holmes isn't exposed to women other than those who have come to him for help, wept, lied, or begged him to solve a terrible problem."

"Don't you see it?" If Lestrade was fully mobile, he would have given Watson a well-meaning and gentle shake. "To him women are a means to a problem somewhere…but according to my wife, _Mr. Holmes _is_ the problem!"_

-

Far to the East on the other side of Hyde Park (and blessedly free of the perfume of Lambeth), Clea Lestrade was taking a reluctant respite from her work and regarding the unexpected guest to the Lancashire-Rose.

Mr. Holmes had faced royalty, beggars (he rather preferred their company), thieves of all stripe, murderers, and religious representatives as powerful as any magnate.

What he did not like to face was the rampant unknown.

Mrs. Lestrade calmly poured the tea. While Holmes had no idea of the significance, it was in a way, her small revenge upon him for walking away from her teapot the first time.

Mr. Holmes was capable of surprising her…but then, she was accustomed to surprise. She did not actually approve of surprises, but they were a fact of life and not worth moaning about.

"I wish nothing better than for us to return to our old paths, Mrs. Lestrade." Mr. Holmes took the cup in his long fingers, but his chilled-looking hands did no more than hold the warmth for a moment. "As we are not seeing eye-to-eye from a distance, I felt perhaps we would be more expedient from across the table."

"Understandable, Mr. Holmes," Clea agreed without giving so much as a shred of a clue as to how she felt. "Perhaps it would help us both if you explained why you chose the gratuity of a pound?"

Those glittering grey eyes—Clea thought of the way opals caught the light when one least expected them—sparked off, and she realised he was unable to hold himself completely still when his brain worked.

"It was merely the first sum that came to my mind. I've no experience with the flageolet."

"Flageolet is an excellent word, but a bit under-simplified." Clea admitted. "We paid twopence for it, because we knew the dealer. Nicholas has a few things he excels at, and I'm afraid music is something he genuinely enjoys." Clea sipped her tea while Holmes silently parsed the possibilities of the words, "afraid music" in his mind. "Been that way ever since Mr. Lestrade came back from France with that sea-shell hunting horn…" She lowered the cup and stirred delicately. "Your offer of a pound was far too generous for a broken flageolet, and that is all there is to it."

Holmes was no fool. "Perhaps you thought I might be offering an extra compensation for your family difficulties, as it was partially the fault of others that your husband was injured."

"That did occur to me." Clea admitted. "At first. The notion fell through the keel after a few days."

"If I may, what convinced you otherwise?"

"Because even you wouldn't think my husband was worth a wretched pound note." Clea's deep eyes threatened to fire projectiles of flame across the table and through the wall. "And if you were going to recompense my husband for his injury, then you would also do the same for my son's lost muffler, which aggravated his condition and prevented us from going on holiday."

Holmes was perhaps more fascinated by Mrs. Lestrade's demonstration of problem-solving than was good for his health. "And again if I may…why did you not merely send the cost of the muffler along with the flageolet?"

"Because, for one, I would _also_ have to add the price of Mr. Lestrade's lost silk hat, and if one starts down that road, one wanders into the truly absurd, such as the cost of shoe-polish for the scuffed leather, or the tear in the sleeve, the doctor's bills, the medicines, the loss of work due to lack of sleep…the lack of pay…shall I continue?"

"No, I do believe I see your point." Holmes was slightly surprised to see himself fathoming the reasoning of Mrs. Lestrade's actions.

"Dr. Watson more than helped us when he offered aid and gave us the name of a trusty colleague. Asking tit for tat would be tasteless as well as self-absorbed."

"Would I be able to make you understand that I meant no harm in the payment of a pound?" Holmes decided this was as fine a point to take as any other. "The sum was no difficulty to me."

"Mr. Holmes, that is rather the point." Clea spoke patiently. In her own environ, she was far from the tooth-gnashing ogress her reputation had built. "What does a gesture mean, if it means nothing? That was a move of carelessness on your part, no doubt because you aren't at all comfortable with accepting gifts yourself. But how would you feel to be _thrown_ something useful?"

Mr. Holmes' thin lips moved in something like a smile. "I believe we being to understand each other, Mrs. Lestrade. Shall we pursue this topic in hopes of reaching an agreement?"

Mrs. Lestrade rippled the surface in her teacup with a sigh. "Mr. Holmes…"

"Please." He elevated a hand. "There ought to be some way in which we can manage to give each other the last word in this situation?"

She pondered that carefully, but at heart she was as unable to resist a puzzle as she was a bowl of bread-dough that needed a good punch.

"We can but try, Mr. Holmes." She said with a slow smile. "You may go first."

"Cannot a lady go first?"

"Not in her house, Mr. Holmes, and not before a guest."

Holmes had no choice but to agree.

It was an amusing state on matters that what was a calm and civilised conversation between one pair of adults was the topic of well-justified and nervous speculation on part of the other pair involved.


	10. Strange Matters

Three days later:

It was late. Facing the end of the week, London merely prepared for a new frenzy of celebration. Instead of suffering through it all, Clea willfully chose to become a part of it by hosting a charity buffet to demonstrate her students' new skills. The times might yet be a-changing, for Clea was slightly surprised—and encouraged—by the number of proud fathers.

It was over eight hours of whirl, frill, lace, flowers, tablecloths, starch, brief periods of hysteria at the sight of a microscopic smudge or smear, and of course prayers. Lots of prayers. Clea learned much about the many variations of Protestantism as well as the rival factions…

All good things must come to an end, and the Charity's ended with a gradual whimper.

Tired out, her feet aching, Clea leaned against a table (why did they always have to make tables for big people?) and tried not to think about the layer of dampness between her skin and her clothing. The evening air coming from the half-open windows was just as damp and unpleasant to the touch. Her feet throbbed like hot horseshoes as she sipped the last of the cool switchel.1 Several of the girls remained; they would finish the cleaning and spend the night at the school itself, where the appointed matron would keep a gimlet eye on the beholdings.

She sighed as the tangy liquid seeped through her dry tissues, and wiped a stray lock off her moist forehead.

"Shall I take the rest of the glasses, ma'am?"

"Thank you, but leave that one out, Anna-Lies." A click of hooves and a slightly-squeaky growler from the street anticipated her next sentence. "I do believe my escort has just arrived."

Her husband carefully shut the door behind his back and waited for her to descend the steps. He was wearing—actually wearing—his coat with both arms in the sleeves. She smiled. Yes, his arm was out of that sling! What a relief! But his face was wearing the strangest of expressions…

"Did Dr. Watson give his blessings, love?" Clea picked up the left-behind glass and held it like a banner. As his fingers closed on the cool drink and around her hand, she stretched up so she could pop a kiss on his forehead.

"That, and more…I suppose." Was his slow reply. "He was a bit in a hurry…something about Mr. Holmes wanting to meet him at Marcini's for something."

"Is something wrong?"

"I've no idea." He confessed. "By any chance, dear, did you encounter _anyone_ unusual at your banquet this evening?"

"Hmn? Can't say I did, dear. It was the usual lot of them…whatever for?"

"Oh, nothing I suppose." Geoffrey didn't take his face off her for one second as he spoke. "I was about to head home to pick you up when I'm all but shanghaied by one of the secretaries for the Home Office." If anything, his stare grew more intense. "It seems we've been given a…vacation to Surrey."

"Why, that's wonderful!" Clea exclaimed. "I don't think we've ever had a vacation without going back to my parents' country home…and I know Cheathams wear thin fairly early on a body."

"Clea…I don't know how you did it, but I'm certain you did _something_." Geoffrey lifted a warning finger in the air. "The odds are a bit on the long side. For one thing, the Home Office's usual idea of a vacation has rather to do with an extended work-period far away from the Thames when the wind is blowing."

"Dearest, what could I possibly do that a lobbyist couldn't?" Clea looked the picture of perfect innocence and bewilderment.

It might have fooled a complete stranger, or perhaps Mr. Holmes—for all of three seconds. It didn't work at all on her husband. Suspicion was never so rampant. "Clea, you are a woman. You are already a lobbyist."

Clea didn't blink. "Guilty as charged, but I still didn't do anything."

"If you say so, dear." Geoffrey let the matter drop. He might claim to be "below-genius" grade, but he knew when to save his strength for the times that he needed it. "How soon do you think we can pack?"

"Well…I don't know, Geoffrey. What part of Surrey are we headed to?"

"You mean you don't know?" The skepticism fell out of him like a pair of false teeth.

"Dear, Surrey is a large territory. With more boroughs than I have fingers!"

"I can't help you there." Geoffrey pulled out a small envelope with official-looking stamping on it. "Have you ever heard of a place called the _Arbor Vitae?"_

Clea had to think about it. "No…I don't think I have." She caught his new expression. "Dearest, I'm a bit of an expert on anything that has to do with Lancashire…but there is just a slight bit of distance between there and that."

"And that I'll grant you…" He looked at the gift with doubt, and a germinating sense of concern. "I don't know." Were his next words. "I'm not accustomed to this sort of problem."

"It's a problem when someone gives you something?"

She got "the look" she deserved. "Didn't we just go through this with you and Mr. Holmes?" He asked wryly.

Clea had the grace to blush.

"Well." Still troubled, he returned the envelope to his pocket. "I don't understand it, so that makes it difficult to like…the nearest I can figure is this is from the Home Office in order to make up for the weeks without any pay."

Clea frowned lightly. "If you're not comfortable with it, dear, we can always…"

He was already shaking his head, no. "You don't quarrel with the Home Office." He told her firmly. "That is, not if you want to keep your job…we're stuck with this, so we might as well make the most of it…whatever it means to be a guest at the _Arbor Vitae_."

"We can look it up when we get home." Clea suggested brightly. "And with that in mind…what say you that we _do_ get home? The childer are waiting for us, and we do need to plan out some things…some things besides packing and boxing."

It was her last word on the subject, and it was good enough. Geoffrey still had his suspicions--various and sundry, truth to tell. Whilst he disliked knowing he was in the position of believing without evidence...he still couldn't shake the bone-deep knowledge that somewhere, Clea had manipulated the dice of Fate and come into this particular windfall. He also knew just as intangibly that Mr. Holmes was involved in it somehow.

Which led to his last, and strongest private conclusion. That there was little he could do about it anyway, and if he wanted to stop living in fear of the unknown, he'd best face the fact that his "vacation" was going to be within the wallowing-grounds of one particular Surrey Inspector.

Paranoid, he reminded himself in the privacy of his thoughts in the dark of the growler. Just because you're going to some strange-sounding place on the map, doesn't mean you're going to collide with Baynes...or even Mr. Holmes. No, it doesn't mean a thing.

Perhaps he could even convince himself of that by the time they left the train station...

-


	11. Suspicious Death

"Why can't our sister come with us?"

"Martin Lestrade, you know the proper way to talk!"

"Why _isn't_ our sister coming with us?"

"That's better…and because I don't want a babe travelling the trains to an uncertain clime and the Bradstreets were happy to have her while we're gone."

"What's wrong with the clime?"

"I don't know, Martin! It's Surrey! I don't know much about Surrey!"

"Why are we going to Surrey? We never go to Surrey."

"There's many a place we haven't taken _you_ to, Master Martin."

"What's in Surrey?" Nick persisted. "Do they have snakes?"

A lady did not scream. Clea chose to breathe deeply for a few moments on the train-platform. As she did, she pondered to herself that Mr. Holmes was as dense as lead if he thought her husband was an imbecile—look how he had the genius to vanish just before the flurry of questions. "Have to buy the tickets now," _indeed_.

And with timing so impeccable it spared him future indirect attacks, Geoffrey stepped across the sooty platform with the little tickets clenched in his hand. Clea knew he would be checking and re-checking them in his pocket at least twenty times before the master actually examined them.

"Surrey is forested, with some Roman ruins, some sort of stream, river, canal, or ditch every time you turn around, and a reputation based on fine capons." Clea answered her sons in a most harassed manner.

"Why have we packed so many clothes?" Nicholas wanted to know.

"You switch tracks faster than Blackpool!" Their father exclaimed. "We're not packing an unusual amount of clothes!"

"We're bringing two of our suits!" Nicholas persisted. "We never do that when we're seeing Grandfather."

"Your grandfather keeps at least two suits on standby for when you mess them up." Geoffrey told them with a bit more patience than Clea was feeling at the moment (after ten minutes of this, she felt ready to let him take over). "We have to bring all our own down to Surrey."

"Why are we going to Surrey?"

Clea instantly broke her resolve to stay silent. "Because we were invited down, Martin! It's a chance for a little trip for us!"

"Are there frogs in Surrey?" Nicholas wanted to know.

Martin snorted with massive contempt. "That's a stupid question, Nick…" He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Frogs are almost everywhere."

"They're not in our garden."

"You'd feed them to death if they were. Frogs aren't stupid."

"Diwall!" Geoffrey exclaimed. This turned more than a few heads to see a respectable-looking man abruptly resort to something that sounded Welsh. "Check your bags! Nick, what happened to the jumper you just had on?"

The train shattered all nearby eardrums, and vibrated into the bones of the rest. With no small relief, the family bundled aboard.

"Fourpence a mile, for this…" Geoffrey muttered under his breath while the boys spent their time wisely and contrived a sort of fort with the baggage in their car. "You're not going to believe this, Clea, but when I went to the window, the teller handed me the tickets and said they were already paid for."

"I suppose that's a bit more we can save for later," Clea observed. Privately, she was starting to have the first echoes of a sensation that was not unlike the one on her husband's face when he came to take her home from the banquet.

Mr. Holmes was a gentleman of his word; she knew that without a doubt. Regardless of his many faults (centred in his lack of manners, all), even his mortal enemies said he never broke his word.

Why then, did she feel she may have agreed to a bit more than she planned on?

Slightly pensive, for she disliked large territories of the unknown, Clea made herself comfortable while Geoffrey distracted the worst of their sons' destructive proclivities with a deck of cards.

_Mr. Holmes wouldn't make this some sort of trick, would he? Everyone says he has a strange sense of humour…even childish and occasionally cruel…but this is just a venture with the family…_

Her thoughts derailed as Geoffrey returned to his seat next to her. He had the window-spot; that went without saying as he could be as restless as any boy's and the hectic rush of the world passing them by was a welcome distraction.

Being unable to cook on a moving train (and especially not in the passenger car), Clea settled for knitting. It was something she frankly loathed to set up, but the monotony forced herself into a state of calm.

Or so she thought. After the rattle of needles began to compete with the sound of the passing buildings, Geoffrey thought to open a conversation and ask if something troubled her.

"Our daughter went with Hazel without a qualm." Clea confessed. "Which was more than I can say for myself."

He gave her a kiss on the cheek. "She'll be fine, Mamm," he assured her in a way that brought a smile to her face. "Think of how she'll be spoiled with the Bradstreets. Dear Lord—she'll back thinking she's a Highlander or north-islander!"

"What a fate!" Clea exclaimed, and they both laughed. The train whistled on, and Martin was dismayed to find the cards were un-marked of mischief.

Geoffrey quietly pulled out several brown paper sacks of something that still steamed warmly. "Tied you over until noon?" He queried with a knowing quirk of the eyebrow. Faster than that, one bag each vanished into the children's clutches.

"Couldn't you have waited until they got hungry?" Clea whispered plaintively.

"With a belly full of white walnuts, I promise you they'll be nodding off by the time we hit the countryside. The line gets rather hypnotic once we're toward the Downs." He passed over a bag for herself. "Care for some?"

"I just set up this knitting too," Clea scolded without any feeling. "But…I have something to wash it down with." Clea pulled out a small, chill bottle and he whistled in admiration.

"And here I only thought you kept a knife under there," he teased.

"I don't keep a knife there any longer," Clea protested as she just as magically produced two glasses from the side-pockets. "The word's out, you know."

"If that's so, I'm not going to ask where you have it now." He held his glass still as she filled it up with a deep red liquid. "And here's to you," he poured a handful of still-warm walnuts.

"Mmmmn, thank you…" Clea closed her eyes in brief bliss at the flavours that mingled together. "I did some asking about on the Arbor Vitae." She told him.

"Let me make some assumptions. It's in Surrey…so it's probably expensive, showy in a tasteful sort of way, and near forest and water—possibly both."

"Aren't you the clever one." Clea leaned into his shoulder. "It is _quite_ a large hotel. If I'm to believe the things I read, it was a haven for wanderers all the way back to the Roman occupation." She sipped her wine gently. "For many of the gentry, it is their home for the entire season. Several baronets and Dukes and various attendees of the Embassy—ours and our foreign allies--even have full-time "escape estates" nearby or on the grounds."

"Roman occupation…probably could get there from Stane Street, if it was fully operational." Geoffrey mused. "How big is this place?"

"Hundreds of acres, more or less…Nick will adore the chance to view the wildlife…you look uneasy, love."

"If it was that big, why have I never heard about it?" He wanted to know. "Surrey's a border of Greater London, for heaven's sake…is it that out of our price range?"

"I have no idea." Clea suspected he might be correct.

Clea had made certain to learn about the entire region before their trip tomorrow. She knew Surrey was "rich"—be the word applying to the forestland, Roman history, or businessman.

"Perhaps they're just good at keeping crimes away." She said at last.

"I do hope you're right," he said in a faint voice.

-

The train whistle shrilled far too close to their ears, and everyone woke up in a confusion of darkness and rolling steam. Clea Lestrade blinked heavy eyes, and wondered what was clinging to her eyelashes as he husband sat upright between a coat and a groggy son. Throughout the train, she could hear—and feel—the vibrations, mutters, thumps and rumbles of people collectively aiming to depart in decent time. Someone dropped a valise outside, and an ungentlemanly utterance was smothered in favour of a more gentlemanly "goodness me" a moment before a very feminine voice assured him, "not at all, sir."

Clea had to smile to herself at the thought of how for the most part, men pinned back their masculine tendencies in the presence of a woman…except in her family.

After that there was no time to smile at men. It was a hustle from train to the large stone perch substituting the usual sort of platform, and if Clea didn't feel like a mother hen with her brood…the broad open spaces of the countryside were always a bit of a shock after becoming used to the towering glints of light and reflecting glass of London. It might be dark in the city, but the lamps were never out and one could feel the compression of space with stone and blue London brick.

Behind her, Geoffrey lapsed into a very brief bout of cursing, using words she had yet to translate even after all their years of marriage. "…and there it goes," he finished by way of explanation.

Clea turned and spied the rolling wheels of the departing cab. "Oh, dear."

"Just as well, I suppose. It was already full…" He sighed. "I'm going to go to the stables and see about renting a trap or something."

"We'll be fine here." Clea found a spot at the bench pressed up against the clap-boards of the station, and firmly stationed a son on either side.

"There must be bats here." Nicholas was peering hopefully into the darkness. "If there are frogs, there should be bats."

Martin heaved a sigh and subsided into a ferment of annoyance. He pulled his traveling-desk to his chest and chose to keep his lips firmly shut. Clea still hadn't confirmed which parent he had adopted that from, but she was beginning to have a suspicion. Silence was more than golden if one had Cheatham blood in them…it was practically a survival skill.

"Look, Martin." Clea tried to distract his self-absorption. "Go see what that big stone plaque says at the edge of the platform." The boy dutifully (as if his curiosity wasn't a powerful motive) hopped up and scampered lightly across the creaking planks to see the letters cut into what appeared to be some sort of dark limestone. He read it twice over, and came running back with considerably more energy.

"It's to commemorate the ancient tribe of the Atrebates," He explained excitedly. "They had a settlement in Hampshire, and they had to fight both the Romans and the Catuvellauni. Their name means "settlers!"

"That's wonderful, Martin. Perhaps you and Nicholas might find some old bits of those fights with the Romans." Clea knew looking for small, sharp objects buried in the dirt was far safer than climbing trees in search of bird-nests, jumping into ponds with murky bottoms for frogs, or seeking poisonous snakes.

"I hope you realise we'll be paying someone for the loss of their flower-bed now." Geoffrey whispered into her ear. "That's assuming we make it to the Arbors…"

"Why, dear?" Clea twisted to peer up at him.

"Supposedly, someone ordered a barouche for us…but it hasn't shown up yet. Something about a…difficulty at the Arbors." Geoffrey's expression was even more interesting than before. "What's gotten Martin all a-whiskered?"

"Surrey is part of Brittania Prima, and there are still bits and pieces of the Roman occupation lying about!" Nicholas had quickly been infected with his brother's enthusiasm. He was flying through a folded booklet of Surrey that Clea rather wished she could be reading at that moment. He peered officiously at the small print under the single lamp of the platform, while small insects flew in record-speed ballet about the globe. "The Romans raised chickens in Dorking…that's where Mother gets her birds!"

"Those things?" Geoffrey was interested despite himself. "They're big birds…three of them top two stone!"

"It says here…they're the same breed of chicken the Romans brought!" Nicholas exclaimed.

"We're not bringing any back." Geoffrey cut it off at the neck. "But if you're good, I may think of letting you have an evening job at your Mamm's school taking care of the birds."

"Could I, Mamm?"

"I don't know…" Clea drawled out slowly. "He needs to show he's responsible, dear. He isn't keeping his part of the bedroom clean…"

"I can keep it clean!" Nicholas breathed. "Mamm! There's money to be had in standard breeds!"

"You can draw up a contract later," Geoffrey sighed. "There's the horse-master for the livery…I'm going to see what's got him so upset."

"Oh, dear." Clea said without thinking. It pulled Martin out of his thoughts and all three watched as Husband and father went to the lip of the perch and spoke at length to a small, wiry man not unlike himself. Clea wondered, and not for the first time, if one had to pass a certain physical requirement to be a horsemaster.

He nodded his thanks and strolled back, but there was a glazed expression to his face that Clea didn't care for.

"What is it, love?" She asked softly.

"They're bringing the barouche," He answered slowly. "And they apologize for the delay…it's just…there's been a suspicious sort of death at the Arbors."

"Oh, dear." Clea said again.

This was not looking like a decent sort of holiday.


	12. Chapter 12

The barouche came in short order, with a driver who was deferential to the point that, after five minutes of "sirs" and "thank yous" Geoffrey's temper woke up and he asked _what_ sort of gentleman's tip was required to _not_ require such puffery on their way to the Arbors.

"No tip at all, Mr. Lestrade." The man's educated Manchester abruptly switched to something more appropriate to central London. "I should be tipping you a quid for not making me pull this out." He mis-pronounced "Lestrade" like nearly everyone else on the planet even though he'd just heard it. Clea wished she could be at peace with it.

Geoffrey grinned in thanksgiving and hopped up to share the seat. "Mind? I prefer to look around where I'm going."

"Not at all. You're a sight more restful than the shooting club…they want to take a shot off while standing up, _and_ while I'm driving this brute."

"Did they ever think about how they might have to explain that before the Beak after the wheel hits a pothole and you get blown to bits?"

Looking both ways, the driver reached into the folds of his expensive looking livery and nicked a tiny bit of tobacco. He popped it safely within his mouth before he answered. "Think, sir? The Gentlemen aren't paid to think." He chewed ferociously. "You want them to think, then you take away their cheque-books."

Clea was smiling up at their backs while she cuddled a sleepy Martin. It was so nice to see Geoffrey having a normal conversation.

"How far to the Arbors?"

"Half-hour, this time of evening…don't like to risk the horses even when the roads are as good as these."

The road in question was narrowing to a trace and only the lanterns at the ends of the barouche lit the way. A strip of forest closed over their heads, smelling of oak and pine and damp. Something scurried in the branches. Despite himself, Nicholas yawned, which made Martin yawn too. He coughed once, faintly, and snuggled deeper into the folds of his coat. He was probably too warm, but even though it was supposed to be a pleasant summertime jaunt, he was still recovering.

"What's this about a suspicious death?" Geoffrey wondered. "I hope it wasn't a young one."

"No…no, it wasn't that, Mr. Lestrade." The driver assured him comfortably, with not an obvious jot of sympathy. "Regular customer, like. Only a matter of time before he dropped dead. Wouldn't stop the wining, the dining, and the swiv—_begging your pardon_," he added as he remembered too late that a woman and two boys were just behind him. "The baronet," was the last notation.

"Ahem…which baronet would that be?"

"The baronet of Ryefield, gov. Sir George Woodrow."

Clea blinked as Geoffrey grabbed something to keep from falling straight out of the barouche.

"Other than that," her husband strangled—literally; Clea heard him stop to clear his throat a few times. "This is our first trip here, and we're wanting to know what we can expect."

The Driver mused as he guided the horses to a smoother side of the road. "Well, this sort of place isn't the common lot. It's where the fancies get together when they're trying to impress the other fancies."

"Turn around." Geoffrey said. "We're going home."

"No, wait, Geoffrey, I'd like to know what sort of gift we've been given." Clea rested her gloved hand on her husband's arm. "Just let us hear this out first."

"All right, but if one of us doesn't like what we're hearing, then we're going to Dorking."

"Dorking? What's in Dorking?"

"Chickens!" Nicholas piped up.

"Boots!" his father warned, which was some Dooley-Tinker slang for "shut it". "Dorking is ordinary, Clea. Like us."

"Beggin' your pardon, but the only way one gets on this overblown spa is by invitation." The Driver commented. "You were invited, weren't you?"

"Yes. Someone at the Home Office."

"Then you'll be fine." The Driver assured them all.

"You seem rather certain that we'll be getting along amongst gentry, toffs, limpwrists, politicians, diplomats, and whatnot."

"They're not here to be any of that." The Driver spat serenely. "They're here to play-act."

"Playact?"

"Yes…they're here to pretend like they're normal."

"Why would they have to pretend? They have everything!" Clea exclaimed.

"I suppose once you have it all, you need to get away from it once in a while?"

Geoffrey's eyes narrowed to little black lines. "I just might be coming to you with more advice in the future…what's your name?"

"Joe."

"Joe…?"

"Just Joe."

"Just Joe." Geoffrey's eyes narrowed even further. "What do your employers call you?"

"…"

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

"***"

"I beg your pardon…" Geoffrey leaned close. "Would you mind saying that again?"

"…"

Geoffrey slowly pulled his head back. A new respect clad his face. "Sorry." He apologised. "You know, you can get it changed…a good magistrate would probably take the case for free."

"I know." Joe sighed. "But it's going to have to wait until I retire from here. 's part of the draw with the visitors…they like knowing we all have…country names."

"Are you being paid enough to put up with that?" Geoffrey wanted to know.

"Barely." Was the answer.

Clea was bursting with curiosity, but she knew Geoffrey would tell her later. Probably when the childer were nicely distracted.

"In all fairness, if you could...the name's Lestrade." Geoffrey coughed. "But if you can't remember, that's all right. Most people get it wrong anyway."

"We had a Lestrade once…insisted on the other way." Joe replied. "He was a French fella."

"Well, there you are then."

"Are you French?"

"No. _English_." Geoffrey said firmly.

Clea kept her smile to herself. Geoffrey's private dictum on his surname, "Better Cockney than Continental," he'd said more than once…and always in his cups.

-

"So…Joe…what can we expect at the Arbors?" Geoffrey pulled his bowler off and flicked the train's collection of leavings off the surface. "Besides a suspicious death?"

"Well, there'll be plenty of things to entertain…doesn't matter if you're young or old, rich or poor, or whatever odd hobby…there's bits of an old Roman Wall, then there's a Roman folly out in the middle of nowhere…good place for a picnic…fancy mushrooms for the kitchen…have a few mushroom hunters…and there's the pheasant-hunters, duck-hunters…whatever-has-feathers-hunters…shooting rights extend to a herd of deer that was brought in. A garden-plot was made up so some of the fussier guests can personally see to their own menus…library, play-area for children…a court for the tennis."

This was sounding more exorbitant by the minute. "Just how much does it cost to have a week here?" Geoffrey asked uneasily.

"I have no idea. They don't discuss these things."

"This gets better." Geoffrey mumbled. "By any chance, are there any entertainments that don't require one to be in a crowd?"

"Planning to hide?" Clea asked brightly. "You're not hiding without us, love."

"Fishing." Joe supplied. "A good deal of trout fishing…watch out for some of the anglers, though. They're a bit…" Joe paused to spit twice, as if clearing something besides tobacco from his mouth. "Well, they have their little ways." He said at last.

"No problem." Geoffrey said evenly. "No problem at all, Joe."

And that was because, Clea thought, Geoffrey was thinking of another sort of big fish.


	13. Years of Experience

-

"What's the history of this place, Mr. Joe?" Clea asked politely. "Please forgive my curiosity."

"Not at all, Mrs. Lestrade." He tipped his hat. "It's actually owned by the late Sir George…but 'twas kept quiet for sake of privacy. Sir George took it on to help a friend out of his debts, as it were, and before you knew it, it started running itself." He cleared his throat, and manfully refrained from spitted too close to Clea—a good two yards his aim was. Most impressive. "Bein' of good station, now, he wasn't about to advertise the fact that he was the owner…and I daresay a few of his friends knew the truth but they wouldn't say so either."

"Of course," Geoffrey agreed with that heavy irony that passed for his wit at the end of a very, very long, usually cold and wet day.

"Been in Sir George's family since the purchase…must have been about fifteen years back at April…place just gets bigger and bigger every two or three years…people payin' for a quiet week or three, even a whole season where they can be out of the way." Joe snickered as something just occurred to him, and the Lestrades waited patiently. "Lotsa mothers come here. With their daughters."

"Is this a matrimonial vacation spot?" Geoffrey asked uneasily. Like all sensible men, he was naturally uncomfortable with the topic—Clea felt strongly that he had a good reason. All sorts of hideous things happened among otherwise sensible men and women when marriage came up—and Geoffrey was living proof that survival tactics were a must.

"Not so much a spot this time of year…still nice enough for dancing in London, so's the guests tell me." Joe grinned, which Clea translated as: "The guests babble nonstop while I'm driving them, and I listen."

She was beginning to like Joe. He might be as good a source of information as any housemaid…

-

Worn out by their self-inflicted frenzy, the boys barely reacted when the forest opened to a neatly-trimmed lawn that must have stretched to forty acres, sprinkled with small gas-lamps here and there wrought up to resemble fanciful vinework. The globes of the lanterns were shaped to look like flowers, and added to eerie illusions upon the estate as traps and carriages moved to and fro in a parking-lot not far from a large fountain. From what they could see of the Arbors itself, it was large, made of stone, pillared, and garlanded about with ancient cedars.

"That's lovely." Nicholas muttered to his sleepy brother. "When the moths crash into the glass, they'll be doing it in the finest style."

"Do I want to know what our son just said?" Geoffrey asked from behind Clea.

"He was wondering about the style of the glass," Clea supplied, for they both held out the increasingly irrational hope that Nick would pit his formidable energies to at least one practical tradesman's skill.

"Remind him that glassblowing will rot his lungs." Was all Geoffrey said. "And that pattern isn't new. The Baskervilles had it on their estate in Dartmoor."

"Sir Henry? He's a good lot." Joe piped up. The quid must have run dry; he was fixing a smoke now from a tiny little thing Clea had heard called "fairy pipes." "Always treats a man fair. Not like some of those one-hundred-pound millionaires you see once in a while."

Geoffrey snorted. "The most decent Canadian I've ever met." He flicked a smile at his wife. "The only one, actually."

"A good thing for you, eh, Inspector?" Clea teased back. "My word, the place is…a bit large. I once was at a ball at a place used as a summer home for Queen Elizabeth. It was much smaller." The Virgin Queen had been known for preferring a smaller house, though, if it meant a larger estate to go hunting in.

"We could always camp in the stables."

"Geoffrey!"

"I wasn't serious, dear."

"You were partly joking. There's a difference." Clea was about to brook no nonsense. "We shall see to our rooms and get the boys into bed. Then we approach tomorrow."

"Is there a map or something of the fishing?" Geoffrey agreed by directing a question to Joe.

"Might have something for you…" Joe smiled. "Here we are now…" He tugged at the reins with the lightest effort, and the matched geldings stopped as if it had been their intention the whole time. Might have been; the horses struck Clea as being intelligent, and surely the Arbors wouldn't skimp on a better horse.

"Just a moment…" Geoffrey hopped down on his right foot, straightened, and went to the back to help Clea dismount.

She rested her gloved hand within his and they smiled as she stepped to the crushed gravel. Seashell had been imported to make the walk-way white, and it shone luminescent in the night against the soft glow of the lamps.

"Martin's exhausted," she told him.

He understood. It was the language couples spoke after years of communication. "I'll see to him. Nick, can you get your bag down?"

"Yes, sir…" Nicholas outdid himself by neatly placing the luggage in a line at the wheel. The liveried porters smiled at the boy and thanked him. Clea had made certain to warn her children beforehand: _Do not look or act too independent, for it is the duty of the staff to assist you. They can lose their position if you insist on doing everything for yourself._

"Up you go, Martin-mab," Geoffrey swept his nodding oldest into his arms and gently rested the sick boy's head against his shoulder. Behind his back and standing at the top of the steps was a uniformed policeman standing at attention and a slightly smaller (though not by much) man with a prodigious moustache, and a chin firm enough to break the rocks at Reading. He wore a sensible dust-coat against the country air, and held a small, important-looking satchel in his large hand.

Clea wondered who he was, and a well-dressed man came out and there was a murmured conversation between the three. The tiny woman noted at this point that while there were many examples of the Arbor's staff, they appeared to be the only ones outside who were visiting.

"Hmn," Geoffrey said thoughtfully, mildly, and extended his free hand to hers. They slowly ascended the steps with Nicholas tagging at his father's heels.

Almost-Walrus gave them all a quick nod. "Good-evening to you, Mr. Lestrade. Haven't seen you in ages."

"Well, we've all been busy, haven't we?" Geoffrey answered in that mild I'm-so-inoffensive-you-might-step-on-me voice he carried when he really didn't want to divert any strength to a potential "situation." He nodded at the big Constable. "We heard something of the news while on our way over."

"Outwardly simple enough," Baynes chuckled. "We shall soon see how simple it is. Will this interfere with your…holiday?"

"Not hardly. We're trying to help our oldest recover from a lung infection. I'd introduce you, but he seems to have fallen asleep, so here's Martin's mother, Mrs. Clea…and his brother, Nicholas. Clea, Nicholas, meet Inspector Baynes, Surrey Constabulary."

"How do you do, sir." Nicholas spoke meekly enough, for all that he would probably grow up to outsize Baynes in short order. Clea was glad women didn't have to fully participate in a conversation, as the sooner it was over with the better Martin would be sleeping.

"Lady…gentlemen…" Baynes paused to smile at the non-policemen of the group. "I hope you have a pleasant stay."

"From your mouth to the ears of God, Mr. Baynes." Clea said fervently. "Will you be here tomorrow? I'm told the breakfast is an excellent one."

-

"Breakfast?" Geoffrey asked out the side of his mouth as Clea turned down the sheets. Martin sprawled limp as a doll and the two worked to divest him of his clothing for the night. He was even snoring. "What's going on in that devious head, Clea?"

"Merely being courteous." Clea answered blithely. At Geoffrey's patent look of un-belief, she managed not to smirk too broadly. Behind them Nicholas had found his own bed, and was undressing in a way that would have worried the tailor.

"He was wanting to know something from you, Inspector. I've seen that look before. He didn't want to ask something with the woman and children present. So instead of waiting for him to find a way to bump into us tomorrow, I invited him up for breakfast. Simple."

"Oh, yes. Simple. We've had this conversation about your "simple" before, dear…" Geoffrey carefully took up his son's trimmings and put them on the side-table for the staff to clean. He made a face as he gave himself the same treatment. Clea sighed and stretched within the lovely prison of her dress. "Sorry," he said quickly, and turned to work on the buttons. "We should have brought a girl."

"The only one I would have trusted was Alice or her sister, and they have a right to spend time with their family." Clea responded calmly. "Besides, there was a time in my life when I did quite well without someone hovering over me…at least until it was time to have my buttons done up."

"Well—" Geoffrey saw that Nicholas was as asleep as his brother, and snoring even more successfully. "Let's see to all this and take their cue. Thank god for those train-coats. Your Elizabeth is a genius."

"She ought to patent them." Clea agreed. "Who can find fault with a coat that can let you wear your good things while on a train?" She took the offered night-clothes with relief. "I'm going to see to the bath," she announced. "Shall I save you the water?"

"Don't change the subject, young lady. Are you going to do one of your vanishing acts with the boys while I'm trapped with Baynes the Buttress?"

"Good heavens, no, Geoffrey! Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Past experience…years of marriage…your loathing of letting work get in the way of a holiday."

"Exactly. You have fifteen minutes with him tomorrow while I take the boys to the stables. We're going to set up a riding party. When we come by to pick you up, pay your respects and join us."

"I can see you've thought this over very carefully."

"Past experience…years of marriage…my loathing of work getting in the way of a holiday…"


	14. Dawn Chorus

The heron is a less than melodic way of waking up in the morning, but it is effective.

"I'd forgotten how those things sounded," Clea said by way of explanation for leaping out of bed and frightening Geoffrey half to death.

"Throw them a fish and they'll hush," he advised, blinking rapidly as he tried to finish the process of returning to the land of the woken.

"Then I shall ask the staff for kippers." Clea retorted loftily. "Well…I didn't plan to stay a-bed anyway!" She slid to her feet. "No, stay put," was her addition as Geoffrey continued his Sisyphean struggles to keep his eyes open. "I want to talk with the staff about our things…"

"Um," he agreed and fell backwards, a state in which he remained until she poked him in order to get the last remaining buttons up the back of her dress. Long practice made short work of it, and she left her sleeping family in due order.

Downstairs the dining-hall was as ponderous and stiff as she recalled in passing, but the breakfast-room was as it should be: light, cheerful, and clean. It was early yet for most of the guests; a young couple was up by the open balcony-rail, dressed for walking. With field-glasses in their hands there was little doubt the heron would be a welcome visitor to their table. Clea chuckled at them and found a seat as a young woman appeared at her elbow and asked if she required anything.

"Yes, if you please." Clea smiled. "I have a husband and two children coming down in an hour…and I'd like to wait for them…what do you recommend for breakfast?"

"The country air stimulates the appetite, Mrs. Lestrade. Something light to begin with such as toast and egg with a bit of fruit?"

"Well enough, but how did you know my name?"

"I hope I wasn't too forward. One of your students works in our kitchen, and she saw you come in last night."

"Good news for me!" Clea smiled from ear to ear. "Which of my girls would it be?"

"Miss Viola Carr, Mrs. Lestrade. She has a wonderful hand with our breads."

"Oh, I remember her. Would it be possible to see your kitchens? I confess they're the only architecture I really care for, marvelous though the Arbors are."

Genuine flattery shown in the girl's eyes. "I shall speak to our supervisor, Mrs. Lestrade."

Clea took a small cup of coffee and sipped it delicately, whilst mentally counting off the five minutes she suspected were required to get herself a tour in the kitchen.

"Well, if that doesn't pay for the bother!" The young woman was saying. Her strange words as well as her smug satisfaction collected Clea's attention. As she watched, the young man flipped open a small guide-book with birds on the cover and began scribbling away. Clea was too near-sighted to see whatever was causing the fuss. "Just imagine the look on your mother's face when she finds we're coming back with not one Hawfinch, but three!"

"I would have been satisfied at the bittern, but those little darlings are icing!" The man gushed. He caught on that Clea was trying to peer across the long green sward. "Come see, my good woman! Three hawfinches are taking a drink at the fountain!"

"If you hurry you may catch them…they're so very shy!" The young woman gushed as well—worse than the fountain, in Clea's opinion. She tended to save that particular tone of voice for the thrill of a new baking-pan (preferably terra cotta).

What was Clea to do but join in? She slipped to their table (still holding the coffee) and took the woman's offered glass. It took adjustment, as she was clearly not of a hawklike vision, but she soon made out a trio of oddly coloured little birds perched on the edge of the fountain. They had bulky beaks, stubby little tails, and a black stripe about the eye that gave the impression of disapproval.

"Charming," she decided. "Are they always this busy? I confess I've never seen one before."

"We haven't either." The girl enthused. "When I saw the stand of hornbeams at the edge, I knew we had a chance, but it was such a horrid night, and I didn't think we could rouse ourselves in time—they only like to come out in early hours."

"Five o'clock is certainly early," her husband said in a less charitable tone. "We can thank our new neighbors for giving us the urge to depart…up till past three, and then up again at half-past four!"

"Now, Phillip…" the wife chided mildly. She smiled, embarrassed. "I'm afraid we did have a bit of a problem with our new neighbors on the other side of the wall. Whoever they are, they do like their tobacco."

"I'm not certain we should dignify what they were smoking with that noble weed, Clarice." He explained for Clea's benefit: "It was warm enough to leave the windows open, but we had to close them up. There was so much of that stuff coming out of their windows and into ours; I declare my lungs will not be the same!"

"Some people are like that, I fear." Clea gave the glass back. "I hope you may enjoy your stay despite them!"

"So long as there are no more loud complaints about violinists I've never heard of…"

"Phillip!"

"Well, it's true, dearest. Heard him right through the wall, the wainscot, and two layers of wallpaper! Just because someone was using something called a five-string is no reason to go on a tirade for twenty minutes…"

Four and a half minutes later, a woman tall enough to alarm Hazel Bradstreet strode forth like a campaigner upon the enemy, her aprons as spotless and starched as a choirboy's robe. Clea took in the scandalously red hair (it was natural, she was certain), peeking from the cap and the bright blue eyes. _Up, Irish!_ She thought irrepressibly.

"Mrs. Lestrade? My name is Ulla Redfern. I'm in charge of the kitchens in the Arbors…It is a pleasure to meet you at last. I feel I've already met…Miss Carr talks of you so often and so well." She produced her hand like a man and they shook. "She's a credit to the kitchen. I'd welcome _any_ of your students on your recommendation."

Of such words, friendships are made. Clea beamed.

-

"He says he doesn't want anything, ma'am!" A young girl with a single escaped lock exclaimed as she swept through the kitchen door. Her tray was still in her hands. "And he went and ordered this last night!"

"He didn't order it—his doctor friend did!" Viola Carr had grown some, lost her half-starved look and gained polish since Clea graduated her in the end of '84. "You're going to have to take that tray back up, dear, and tell him the doctor ordered it, and if he has a problem, he needs to clear it with Dr. Watson, because it wasn't _his_ order that sent a perfectly good breakfast up!"

The girl blanched at the thought, but Viola was unfazed.

"You shan't lose your position, Marianne. Just remember that men aren't always reasonable—I saw that, Ruby! Stifle that smirk where no one can see it, thank 'ee…" Viola sternly directed the chagrinned Ruby to stand by the frightened Marianne. "Dr. Watson told us straight to remember that Mr. Holmes forgets to eat, and he'll refuse his meals if he gets the chance because it's just simply second nature to him. You've got to have him understand it isn't his choice in the matter. Ruby, pick up that bottle of His Lordship's and show it to Mr. Holmes. Ask him if this meets with his approval tonight, for we are planning the entire menu around a good glass of this stuff!"

Cowed, instructed, and looking forward to the next tangle with an ungrateful guest, the girls vanished in a swirl of starch and linen. Clea lightly clapped, and Viola turned, her face lighting up.

"Mrs. Lestrade! If I had known you were there, I would have asked you to deal with Mr. Holmes!"

"What for? You seem to be doing well enough on your own!" Clea laughed. "You're looking well—how is your brother?"

"Joined the Navy, the poor soul. When he finishes out he wants to stay wet, for he's already talking of moving to the Water Police."

"Never liked to be dry, that boy." Clea recalled. "What a wonderful kitchen." She looked about, unabashed as Viola and Ulla glowed under the praise. "A woman could be spoilt forever with such stoves…" Everything was so clean, even the dimension-stone of the fireplace appeared to gleam. "And your pottery is outstanding." She absently stepped away from a flying bevy of sauciers and cooks. "Do you manage this by yourself?" She wondered.

"You'd be surprised how many of our guests believe we have chefs." Ulla Redfern spoke dryly, but her light blue eyes glittered with unholy mischief. "The owners decided long ago that a temperamental Frenchman was not worth the trouble, so they put me in charge, and because I insist on only cooking "Provencal" food, they do not complain at simple, decent dishes served with elegance and…flair."

Clea was liking Mrs. Redfern better by the second.

"Viola tells me you have the acquaintance of Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson."

"Dr. Watson is a favourite patron. Mr. Holmes usually forgets things like food." Clea smiled. "Are they here for the vacation?"

"Well, Mrs. Lestrade—Clea, then? Clea, that is what we thought…but yesterday Sir George was found dead, and that Inspector seems to think it is all foul play."

Clea tried not to bristle at "that Inspector" because she had heard it applied to policemen too many times in her life. Geoffrey himself would remind her that a copper's job was not to be pleasant, but to work.

"It is suspicious, you know." Viola said softly. "Sir George worked so hard to invite Mr. Holmes up here to begin with…and before you know it, he's dead."

"He wanted Mr. Holmes to come…and then he died? How strange." Clea mused. "If Mr. Holmes is on a case, you may have some success with getting him to eat…it really all depends on the way he feels and Dr. Watson."

"We aren't giving up." Ulla swore grimly. "My reputation would never survive the loss of such a challenge."

"I quite believe it." Clea admitted. And she did. She wondered if Mr. Holmes had encountered this woman yet…all six and a half feet of her and what looked to be fifteen stone of mass…

-

Clea returned to round up her menfolk for breakfast. They were up and about. Martin had obviously woke up in the final stages of the morning dress; he and Nicholas fussed a great deal over the in-room baths but not long enough to take their time away from enjoying the fancy geysers. Clea took a rare moment to herself and pulled out her little planning-book while Geoffrey shaved on the other side of the door.

"No, you are _not_ going to shave, Nick, and there is no such thing as practicing with a razor! Martin, what are you _doing_ with that wash-cloth?? … It's not supposed to look like a rabbit, use it for the purpose for which it was intended—Good God, why did you draw _cold_ water into the tub?" (flurry of inarticulate mumbles) "Might have known…looks like _another_ talk with your Uncle Bartram…just wash up! And for the record, hot water takes care of the soap much, much better than freezing cold! … Nick, it is freezing! Don't give _me_ that school-room jargon, young sir. If I can survive a December swim in the Thames, I ought to know more about freezing than your chemistry teacher! You've got a _fog_ in here, for heaven's sake! I heard that, Mrs. Lestrade."

Clea quickly pulled her hand from her mouth. "I was just clearing my throat, dear." She wrote quickly. "Do you remember Young Viola at my school?"

"The Viola with the winestain birthmark on her wrist, or the Viola with the little brother I helped on a family murder before I met you?"

"The latter…and I see you do remember…I'll have you know she's working in the kitchen, and is busy seeing to our breakfast."

"Does she still make those stuffed pancakes?"

"Never you worry! She said her brother has his hopes for the Water-Police when he gets out of the Navy."

"Merciful heavens." Geoffrey leaned around the door, a bit of soap still on his chin. "You don't mean the Navy let that boy in? After the way his gang of mudlarks1 dumped those—"

"Even the captain admitted it was an honest mistake." Clea pointed out.

"Hmph. The first honest mistake was letting Joey Carr within twenty mile of something large, dangerous, heavy, or awkward." He wiped the soap off with his neck-towel. "I'll tell you what. You congratulate his sister, and I'll send a wire to the Thames Division." He paused. "Post-haste."

"Very well." She chuckled. "Shall we see to breakfast before you have your meeting with Inspector Baynes?"

Geoffrey rolled his eyes.

"I can request a traditional Breton breakfast." Clea smiled mischievously.

"I'm not going to start drinking this early." Her husband vowed. "Not even for Mr. Holmes and his assistance."2

1 "Street Arabs" or "Street urchins" were for children who lived on the streets, but mudlarks were for the children who worked on the riverbanks, boats, barges, and waterways. They had a similar habit as the dry-land child gangs in thieving and foraging to survive.

2 Many parts of Brittany offer a small amount of alcohol with breakfast.


	15. Stables

Clea knew her her sons—they would eat what was set before them, and Martin was finally regaining his lost appetite. The boy still looked too pale, but a few days' exposure to the fresh air and sunshine ought to turn him up. She smiled as his eyes lit upon the chill pitcher of buttermilk and steaming mound of eggs with toast.

Geoffrey almost absently handed him his lap-napkin and with a single look at Nicholas, silently suggested he follow suit.

There were many more people in the Breakfast Room now. Clea counted: of the twelve round single-leg tables decorating the open-air porch, only one was unoccupied. She found herself soothed by the hum of conversation about them, and the sight of the strengthening sunlight casting pearls into the droplets of the fountain.

She was less thrilled about the fact that the finer crowd might be pretending to relax on holiday, but they weren't perfect in their attempts at disguise. Clea's own family, respectable members of the higher Middle Class, would not have avoided the strange news of Sir George's death. It was one's duty to stay informed of the world around them.

The habit the rich had in refusing to talk of anything "unpleasant" had always seemed self-limiting to her. She surreptitiously studied their dining-companions as waiters flitted like honeybees in a patch of moonflowers, the white linen table-clothes on the round tables on their single legs (flowerstalks) being a wonderful analogy.

"I'm betting you," Geoffrey murmured softly as he answered her request for the butter-pats, "that none of the ladies here are allowed to read a newspaper…even if they so had the desire."

"Or the children until they're deemed old enough." Clea agreed just as softly. She watched Geoffrey spread salted butter molded to look like a daisy on the wholemeal toast, so crisp it grated deliciously against the blade. "And the men themselves aren't reading anything that isn't outside their business interests."

"Much as I'm dying to know—sorry, that wasn't intentional—what the papers will be saying, I'm more concerned as to why Baynes wants to speak with me. I haven't seen a single thing in weeks…and I've been in my office for a whole five days."

"You shall know soon enough," she soothed. "I know how you hate unanswered questions."

Even with the obstacle of manners in his way, Martin managed to make his plate's contents vanish with gratifying speed. Nicholas had no chance to beg for the uneaten parts.

"You missed the show while you were downstairs," Geoffrey smiled with one side of his mouth. "Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson came storming down the hallway with some poor unfortunate soul in tow. Looking for clues I daresay…"

"And you are smiling because?"

"Clea…dear…sweet-heart…ma-mel…you have no idea how exhilarating it is to hear Mr. Holmes give someone else the rough side of his tongue. Better yet, this person actually deserved it…talk about a change." Geoffrey added that last part almost ironically. "Would you happen to know what 'acidulous' means?"

"No, that's one for the dictionary. Was someone being that in Mr. Holmes' presence?"

"Possibly…we'll know for certain when we look it up, hmn?" With the contentment of a man who knows whatever problem is about, isn't his, Geoffrey Lestrade bit into his toast.

-

Clea's sense of timing (developed by experience, not inborn skill), served her well. Viola caught her attention behind a gigantic waterfall of strange purple flowers and tapped the side of her nose. Clea reached up and tugged on her earlobe as if re-checking the little hoop.

"Mr. Baynes is on his way," she told Geoffrey. "I told Viola to set out an extra cup and some of those biscuits."

"Are you ever going to teach me that code you women keep too?" Geoffrey asked mildly.

"What, are you interested? I could give you and Mr. Baynes both lessons." Clea teased richly.

"Baynes? He doesn't even know what a woman's nail-scissors are for."

"Am I to believe there are no womenfolk in his family?" Clea hazarded a guess. "Else he never had a mother's touch?"

Geoffrey snorted. "Baynes? He was raised by wolves, if I'm to believe half of what the Constables say."

"What does the other half say?"

"That he wasn't raised at all. He was proof of spontaneous generation, and fully formed with a badge." Grudging admiration crept into her husband's voice. "There's not many men like him."

"Thank goodness the Saints were paying attention." Clea stood, sweeping boys in her wake. "I shall see to the riding today, and we shall collect you after sufficient time has passed."

"Later, dear." He picked up another slice of toast.

Clea paused; something just occurred to her brain. "Spontaneous generation, Geoffrey?"

"So I'm told." Geoffrey spread butter. "Not that I'll believe it without a sworn statement to the effect. Why?"

"Well…what did he spontaneously generate _from_?"

Geoffrey needed a moment to think about it. "Railway marl and iron filings?"

-

The stables were dry and sweet-smelling. The assortment of horses and ponies were so calm and steady that Clea doubted her senses at first.

Old Joe was wielding a currycomb upon a pair of small golden goats. They were not pleased to see his attention taken from their hides. "Good-morning, Mrs. Lestrade. Would you and your young-ones be hoping for a little ride about the estate?"

"Yes…I had hopes of visiting one of the follies today…or the forest paths." Clea uncertainly peered about. "Those are pretty little goats you have there."

She had inadvertently made a friend for life with the statement. "My daughter's best," he said proudly. "She married a fisherman off Guernsey, and he gave her a whole flock of them. Mother and daughter, here, they pull a cart for the children."

Nicholas switched to the expression known as "all ears" at this.

"You may be a bit heavy for them, dear."

"Not a bit of it. They're quite strong little ladies, aren't you?" He rubbed a polled head affectionately. "They do need some exercise…I could take up the cart. Would your sons like some lessons in how to drive?"

"They already know how, but it wouldn't hurt to keep their hand in." Clea saw the goats had completely charmed Nicholas. He would be asking to sleep in the stable soon…"If you don't mind helping us select mounts for the rest of us."

"Well, now, I'd be delighted." Joe smiled. "Where would you like to go today, Mrs. Lestrade? We have good cold trout-streams—the swimming's too brisk for some of this thin-skinned lot, I don't mind telling you…but the Arbors had a Roman folly built up to remember the original Roman settlement here. There's a good, cold well in a small gazebo they put up. Good place to have a picnic."

Clea had been thinking of exactly that. "That sounds like good advice, Joe." She assured him.

He grinned shyly, his manners forbidding him to look at a woman completely in the eye; his gaze was kept downward and to the side the entire time. "I'll set up the cart…t'would be an easy thing to put the supplies in, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would." Clea traded one plan in for a better one. "With that in mind, the two of us ought to come across a good team of horses and ponies for this jaunt."

Nicholas quietly requested Joe's attention. "Do they have names?" He asked politely.

"Of course they do, young sir." Joe smiled. "This is Pi…and her daughter is Slice of Pi." He stroked each doe's head affectionately.

Clea cleared her throat. "Might I inquire..?"

"Everyone does, Mrs. Lestrade. It is because the mother here, the Frenchy who sold her was very, very determined that we understand she gives a daily average of 3.14 kilograms of milk." He explained to Nicholas: "In English pounds, that's pert-near seven pounds of milk!"

"One pound shy of a gallon." Nicholas said proudly.

-

Clea chose to walk a bit after the initial test-ride around the clearing with the little pony. She was so small she never had to bother with that false vanity of wanting a warmblooded horse. Ponies were smaller, and frankly, she felt they were smarter.

She chose to ride ahead while the boys remained in the stable, flipping a coin to see which drove the goat-cart first. Old Joe had already sworn he would see them as far as the crossroads of the trail.

Riding sidesaddle was no particular hardship to Clea; she was small enough that most equine mounts were a problem for her, and the creamy white pony fitted for her size had Welsh mining stock in its blood. Like a mining pony, it was patient and steady, rather wordly to her thinking and difficult to impress. Halfway back to the fountain, she put her hand over its eyes just to see if it had gone blind like a mining pony.

Geoffrey was stepping down the marble steps of the breakfast-balcony, dressed in his country clothes and dustcoat. She would have recognized Inspector Baynes in the dark. He stood at the top, still in the act of answering something Geoffrey was saying, and his thick moustaches appeared to bristle with his unhappiness, like a walrus kept out of the water too long.

Geoffrey smiled openly to see her, and held out his hand for the gelding Joe had sworn would "Suit the Mister."

"There's a pretty one." He said as if he didn't want to be caught praising a horse. "Did you bring the booklet?"

"Yes, and the boys are going to meet us at the Crossroads of the trail." Clea passed him the reins with aplomb. "Shall we enjoy our holiday?"

"Yes." If Geoffrey sounded as if he were speaking through his teethWith the bulky form of Baynes at the top of the steps, and Mr. Holmes running at large, Clea could hardly fault him.


	16. Scales

Geoffrey waited until a bit of distance was between them before he spoke. "Thank you." He whispered with feeling, as if Baynes had awesome gifts in eavesdropping. He was considerably higher up than herself, but they could hear each other perfectly.

"What did he want to know, dear?"

"He wanted to know if we'd seen anyone on the way here."

"How could we have seen anything? It was dark as a coal mine during the shortest day of the year!"

"Not quite that dark," Geoffrey corrected. He had been underground, so she conceded the point. "It was fairly dark…but I didn't see anyone."

"I can't say I expected to see anyone…except that I was looking about like any other excited visitor." Geoffrey found great interest in the splotched little horse. "I wonder where they found this one?" He wondered. "Looks to have a bit of this and that in him."

"Joe called him a Sabino."

"He certainly is." Geoffrey tried hard to be at arm's-length with most animals, but a few were capable of worming their way into his reluctant affections. It was a large pony for its mixed bloodline.

Martin emerged on the back of his pony, a strong little thing with more than a little Welsh. Nicholas had the goats teamed up and the back of the small cart carried Clea's picnic basket. Geoffrey, well used to his sons, never turned a hair.

"Aren't you a little surprised that he's driving a goat-cart?" Clea teased.

"Not hardly. It means he gets to play with two animals instead of one."

"Oh, you're right there!" Clea stifled her laugh into her glove. "Nicholas!" She called. "Stay on the path. People want to walk on the lawn for the grass, not the castings."

"I thought it would be all right, Mother. They're letting the sheep on the lawn."

"The sheep are cropping the lawn, dear." Clea sniffed. "You shouldn't pretend ignorance, my son. It doesn't become you."

Nicholas turned the red of a beetroot and ducked his head. Martin supremely rode on in that sort of silence only an older brother can attain.

The Arbors were magnificent in the early morning light. Low banks of cool mist rolled gently over the greensward, obscuring the flock of pale Southdown Sheep as they clipped their way across the clover. They were too close to the gardeners struggling to re-plant an entire row of young dogwoods along a curving stone wall. Clea amused herself by watching the men try ineffectual methods of driving the stubborn animals away.

"Bucolic, are they not?"

"Safer to look at than swans." Geoffrey reminded her.

It must be nice to look upon trees whenever one wanted to. Still…she didn't think she'd like to live here very well. It was very quiet.

"How's the arm?" She asked.

"I won't be turning any cartwheels, but at least it isn't hurting." He passed her a wry look. "You were wanting to see the Folly?"

"Yes, but there are several if I'm to understand the little booklet. This path takes us through the forest a bit…about a mile of wandering…and opens up by a Roman Folly. I've heard of or seem plenty of follies in my life, but I can't remember seeing a Roman folly."

"Probably just a fake ruin in the countryside so someone can believe they're in the shadow of an old villa."

"Isn't that romantic." She teased.

"You have no idea how often the police collide with Roman history in the line of work." He sighed. "Well, I take it back. The ruins aren't what spawn the headaches. It's the museums and archaeologists." He reached up and began to rub at his forehead, as if forestalling that sort of head-pain.

Clea understood that London (if not all of England Herself) was frequently at loggerheads with itself over the issue of Roman relics. It was just inevitable, she supposed. The Romans had built on sensible places—or they drained fens and marshes and made the lands livable…and people were living there yet. Last year Geoffrey had encountered a furious battle between a road-engineer's dream of creating a safe pedestrian trod for those who could not afford any other transportation…and the fact that the trod would have cur across (by a shocking six inches) the edge of an old property-line being reviewed in a Hadrian's Era dig.

Geoffrey had sided with the engineer in the mess, feeling that the safety of women and children trying to get to the Serpentine ought to have priority. When the Museum won, he sulked. When the Museum hastily backed out to find the dig connected to a foul sewer line…he had smiled.

"What a lovely day," she looked around the opening of the forest. It smelled like sweet, alkaline earth after a rain, pine needles, and mushrooms. The fog rolled after them, following the slight clear lines of the path's clearing, and she wondered if the scene would be any more peaceful.

In the distance, someone gave a shout. Clea wondered if she had imagined an "aha!" but no other such sounds touched her ear.

And gradually, Geoffrey relaxed, though Clea couldn't help but note he had to give everything a slightly suspicious look. She put it up to his usual worries of being out in the country.

-

_One hour of meandering riding later: _

"Remind me again why people build follies with their money instead of…well…donating to orphans?"

"I think follies are supposed to be less nonsense than hiring a mad monk to cloister in your back garden." Clea suggested.

"Point to Cheatham," Geoffrey smiled. "Yes, Martin! You and Nick can explore--and you know the blessed rules--!" He roared the last into empty space. Neatly hitched goats and a pony were left staring in bewilderment at the abrupt abandonment.

Nick paused at the lip of the little grove. "Stay together, and if you don't know what it is, don't touch it!" Nick panted. "And come back in twenty minutes." He was gone before there could be an addition.

"You know, they say daughters are less trouble." Clea chuckled.

"Less trouble…but twice the worry." Geoffrey sighed. "Nature's attempt at a balance, I suppose."

Clea laughed out loud and pulled the basket out of the cart. "For a rebuilt ruin, it isn't bad at all. The staff said the spring water's good to drink. I suppose that's from the chalky soil."

"Good enough." Geoffrey took one of Martin's knit bags and lowered the bottles inside to the cool darkness by their strings. Once underneath the blue shade of the roof—it was meant to look like a miniature temple, Clea guessed—she began unpacking the food. When the boys returned, they would be hungry.

"Dear me." Geoffrey said behind her.

"Pardon?"

"Probably nothing."

"The last time you said that, my brother Andrew had to walk three miles home! You don't say those particular words every day, Inspector!" She brushed her riding-skirts off and rose to her feet. Her husband was holding something inside his dripping hand. "What is it?"

Wordlessly, he held out his hand. It was full of rusted, twisted iron pins. "Do you think a few souls aren't happy here?" He wondered.

"A cursing well?" Clea shuddered and rubbed her arms. "No mention of that in the booklet!"

"No…" Geoffrey rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Some cursing wells are actually an attraction—don't ask me why. I imagine they don't want us to know this well is being used as such?"

"Would ruin the fantasy, hm? Well, let's not say anything." She sighed. "Sit you down, Geoffrey. There will be no peace when the boys get back for their luncheon."

-

Twenty minutes later, Clea was not only rueing her words, she was rueing the day, the country, and wondering if she could blame Mr. Holmes for her accelerated heart-rate.

Geoffrey took the return of their sons with the patient long-eyed look that was associated with the finest examples of "Constable Plod."

"That's an odd-looking snake," he commented, and stretched out his hand.

"I'll take your word for it, thank you, now do something about it!"

Geoffrey ignored her—which was unusual for him. "Nick, let me see that…" He took the coiled little beast in his palm. "Clea, have you ever seen a snake like this?"

"I don't care to see a snake, Geoffrey! I'm not going to look again!"

Geoffrey paused to assimilate this new information about his wife. "You never turned a single hair when those spiders hatched in the attic, but you—"

"_**Geoffrey, put that thing away!"**_

He winced. So did his sons, and possibly most of the surrounding wildlife. "Yes, dear." He looked both ways, and to Clea's continued horror picked up the thin linen sack used for the bread.

"You had best have a compelling reason, Inspector! I'm not sharing a bread-sack with a serpent of Eden!"

"It's all right, dear. I've put it up…No, Nicholas, you can't keep it. Where did you find this?"

"In a pile of rocks behind the brambles." Nick said proudly. "There were at least a dozen, but this one was a little slow."

"It's diseased!" Clea exclaimed.

"Wait a moment…" Geoffrey patiently twisted the throat of the sack, doubled it over, and tied it with the string used to hold the bread in the sack. "There. I'm going to go wash up," he announced in the blandest of voices. "Shall we eat?"


	17. Trouble in Paradise

The boys ate as if they were starving. The country air did indeed stimulate the appetite. Clea had deliberately unpacked only half the food, knowing they would need it a few hours later.

Clea waited until they were completely busy with chewing on the cold chicken before she whispered to Geoffrey: "What are you doing with that bloody snake?"

He shrugged, not wanting to talk before the boys either. "Best to put it back where it was found, and that wasn't here. Someone's going to kill it for certain if they find it here. I know you don't like them, but I for one don't want their job."

"Put it that way…When did you become an expert on snakes?"

"You'd be surprised what people send us, thinking we're the blessed Customs Department…" Geoffrey held his sandwich before his face. "And if it's the one I think it is…it might get a bit bigger than it is now."

"It's already too big!"

"Dear, it can't be over eight inches."

"That's nine inches too long!"

He stopped chewing for a moment and regarded her while Nick tried to sneak bread cubes to his goats. Martin was trying to look for interesting rocks and handle them while he ate; Clea didn't know which was worse, so for now she ignored both. "Mamm always told us not to kill that kind of snake. She was very strict about it."

"What kind of snake is it?"

"I have no idea. I've never seen it here before…just in France." He shrugged lightly. "Then again, I try to avoid the country as much as possible."

"Every man has his faults." Clea said supremely. "I'm just glad yours doesn't involve tracking mud throughout the house."

"Just a half-inch of London smoke at the end of the day…"

"I'm going to blame Nick's skill at creating menageries on you."

"Because of a little snake? Clea, is this a Cheatham trait?"

"What do you mean? All sensible people loathe snakes."

"Well, that is you…sensible, I mean." He finished chewing. "Do your brothers and father feel this way?"

Clea stopped herself before she could answer. If an expression could be sculpted from pure suspicion, it would feel something like what was stretching her face at that moment. "We are not taking it home, do I make myself clear?"

"I'll let it loose as soon as the boys show me where they found it." He assured her.

Clea was so relieved she didn't think that Geoffrey's capitulation might signify something else later down the road. Instead, she passed small biscuits out and reminded her sons not to feed any to the animals.

"I shan't worry about that." Geoffrey chuckled. "Generous to a fault your children may be…I don't think they'll be sharing their part of the chocolates."

-

The spring bled a silvery trace through a small clay pipe from behind the folly and into a little pool that sang of frogs and shimmering insects. Geoffrey had let their mounts drink as soon as they dismounted. He seemed to like the Sabino, or at least, he was giving it attention she wasn't used to seeing him give a dumb animal.

Butterflies wobbled in the air before her, and she smiled to watch the brief display. The sunlight felt so very good, and Martin hadn't coughed in over two hours. Even a strong concoction like elecampane and liquorice needed the assistance of open, clean air.

Clea relished her brief moment alone in the sunlight while the boys sent their father to whatever benighted spot the snake came from. She rested on her side a bit and rolled up her sleeve, lowering her hand in the cool water. Safe water, Viola had assured her. What a shame it was being used as a source of cursing.

Clea was no stranger to the concept of a sacred well. You couldn't swing a ball on the British Isle and let it go and it not fall near a well somewhere. The land was rich with water the way few countries were, and yet the wells remained sacred without being taken for granted.

Wishing wells were for the romantic; or the wells that took on some significance in history or myth. Cursing wells…those she disliked but she knew just how popular they could be. She'd even visited a few in her youth. They were usually abused and stained examples of the countryside; rags for wishes tied to the surrounding trees and left to rot in the sun and wind. Pins were twisted as surely as the desire to cause pain, and thrown into the well with the wish to do harm…and as the pins slowly rusted, the curse would leak into the person's life.

"_Oh, come in. You don't really believe in it, do you Clea?" Alicia had teased while she and the other girls warped perfectly good pins and tossed them into the dark, slightly mossy water below. The dirty rags flapped in the breeze like weak butterflies over their heads. Long dead, the little dogwoods resembled thorn-trees. "It's harmless."_

_Perhaps the action itself was, but Clea could never shake off the idea that there was something very important about making a fantasy of hurting someone—or worse, hurting back. And in such a way._

"_Cheatham temper, Alice!" She told her school-mates. "If I want to hurt someone, I'll just turn them over my shoulder!"_

"_And get scolded by your brothers for not letting them do it!" Little Millicent had retorted. She had been the witty one of their group, and the laugh had been good._

"_It's their own fault for teaching me everything they know!" Clea had the last word, to shrieks and giggles. But no one pressed her into adding to that chilly dark water._

Her school-friends were gone now…off to their own lives, their own husbands and households. Sometimes they corresponded, but her world was now so different from theirs…she heard from Millicent the most…Millicent never feared a thing in her life…

She wondered who was miserable enough to place a curse here…and how many people were involved. Geoffrey had said nothing about his own opinion, but she'd noticed how he'd quietly poured the twisted metals underneath a small bush growing against the folly.

Her menfolk came back, and Geoffrey was practically beaming.

"There's a trout stream on the other side of the deer park," he told her. "A large one." He spread his hands to indicate an unusual size. "Are we allowed to fish?"

"We certainly are," Clea assured him. "But didn't Mr. Joe warn us about the oddness of the angling crowd?"

"Possibly…" Geoffrey's mind was on better things. "What if I take them fishing tomorrow?"

"If you do that, and leave me to the peace of the library, I'll cook up whatever you bring back."

"Deal."

"Can we go to the apple orchard?" Martin asked hopefully. "It's on the map and it isn't too far." He held up the now-battered paper to show.

"I don't see why not." Clea's eyes nailed the drawing of a tiny corral at the outskirts of the orchard. "Is that where everyone wants to spend the rest of the day? Well, then, the majority rules."

"We're in England dear. It's the Queen who has the last word." Geoffrey laughed and kissed her on the top of her head.

-

"Oh, look."

Geoffrey twisted about. "What?"

"There are people on the other side of the orchard."

Geoffrey looked. The morning fogs had long burnt away under the sun, and a delicate haze like isinglass hovered in the air as the last bit of moisture escaped the cool earth to the clouds. Underneath the boughs of the small, heavy fruit trees a small handful of men in country garb were strolling. He made an unhappy sound in his throat.

"Dear?" Clea was a little near-sighted, so all she could see at that distance was the male form.

"It looks as though Mr. Holmes and Mr. Baynes are out on their searching." Geoffrey paused and slid out of the saddle. "Well, if they don't want us there while they look for evidence, they'll just have to tell us…" He cleared his throat meaningfully to his sons. "Stay on this side of the orchard."

That quickly, the boys deserted their parents.

"Don't you wish you could run like that?" Clea chuckled.

"Certainly not. Someone would try to draft me to put that skill to work for the Yard." Geoffrey grutched1 mildly as he neatly unfastened the Sabino's saddle. "I'm going to let them rest a bit…they look as though they aren't used to much gentle attention."

"How can you tell?" Clea wondered. She too, did her part for the little pony and the two of them quietly led the mounts into the oval-shaped corral. At the far end, the one closest to the orchard, extra supports were built into the gate. Clea suspected this was where the fruit was collected and carted off to the _Arbors'_ kitchen.

"They're used to be ridden too hard." Geoffrey didn't explain his reasoning for that; she had long ago learnt he didn't really understand how to explain his knowing. It was a trait he had from his estranged father, but Clea knew her husband would have some sort of fit if that was suggested. "Dear me!"

Clea followed his gaze. Martin and Nicholas had managed to collide, full-tilt into each other.

"Boys will be boys." Clea chuckled.

"Tough as Cheathams…"

"Stubborn as Lestrades. They'll be fine. But in the interests of ourselves being fine…I suggest we not look?"

"Words of wisdom." He shook out the blankets. "Where do you want these?"

Clea pondered, and smiled at the sight of a low stone wall built into the slope like a groundhog kiln. Water trickled out by the use of a clay pipe. "Another spring. I venture it's safe to drink from."

"We still have plenty of our own drink." Geoffrey reminded her. "And you gave Martin quite the speech on how he needs to keep putting that ginger-beer inside him."

"Too true."

London was a city where the heat was too rarely from the open sun. Weeks could pass without a break from the clouds. They felt the change on their thirsty skins and moved the blankets to the shade of a venerable tree, so knotted and bowed it looked like a wooden bear. Long ago, someone had grafted many different varieties upon the branches, so the effect when they looked up was a canopy of differently coloured, shaped, and sized fruits.

"What are those big things?" Geoffrey frowned.

"Pearmains."

"They don't look like pears."

"I didn't name them." She caught her eye upon emptiness where thirty yards of espalier apple trees had been growing against a beautiful lattice-frame.

Geoffrey saw to the goats and threw himself down on the spread blanket with a sigh. Clea chuckled at him and noted that Martin had taken his wooden ball with him on the jaunt. She watched as the boys began a rough-looking game with precious few rules, but they were having fun.

Geoffrey groaned out loud as a length of something that looked like tree-root or a large, dead limb was incorporated into the game. "They know not to aim for the head, Clea?"

"They're supposed to have my brains, so one would hope…"

"Clea, boys don't start growing brains until their bodies slow down a bit. They just can't do both at once."

Clea's eyes might be weaker, but her hearing was not. She twisted her head back up the slope. "I believe we're about to have company, dear."

"You know, there's something sadly amiss about this." Geoffrey whispered as he helped her spread out another blanket for the guests' reclinement. "The only other people we've seen today are either guests with ulterior motives…or they're here about the death of the owner."

1 The ancestor of "grouched"


	18. Gnawing Doubts

Mr. Holmes was wearing a front-and-sides cap that was made along the same soft grey as his clothing. Clea thought he might have looked quite fashionable before he threw himself full-frontal onto the earth somewhere. Having tended too many stains of a similar nature after her husband's return home of a day, she paused to feel some sympathy for the unknown washerwoman.

On the other hand, he looked healthier for being out in the country. Where was Dr. Watson? His absence was rather conspicuous. Inspector Baynes was before her eye again, and he was accustomed to the outdoors for his face was barely pinked frolm the exertion. Behind them both stood a man she didn't know but who wore the clothing typical of a groundskeeper followed him in the back—he had "that look" that said whatever the affairs of these gentlemen were, he was well out of it.

"Hello, gentlemen." Clea nodded courteously.

Geoffrey leaned back on his saddle for a rest and pulled out a pipe. "Everything coming along, Mr. Holmes?"

The amateur snorted with a variety of emotions that do not mix very well. "Well enough," was the strange answer in that strong, carrying voice. "By any chance have any of you good folk noticed anything unusual?"

"Well…" Geoffrey pulled his hat off to let the cool air on his head. His gaze rested on the groundskeeper.

"Allow me to introduce Mr. Hastings," Baynes tilted his arm with a slightly grandiose flair. "He is working out of twig for us…it causes less upset for the guests."

Geoffrey gave his own snort. "Yes, far be it for the company to see the offense of a policeman on their holiday." He pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch. "And in response to your question…I don't think the servants are very happy here."

Holmes' grey eyes glittered like a bird's. "Servants rarely take upon a bucolic pride of their masters." He pointed out.

"To the point that they level curses upon them?" Geoffrey asked. "I pulled out a good handful of cursing-pins out of the Roman folly, and I'm certain there's hundreds more lurking in the bottom."

"The pins could also indicate a dissatisfaction at particular and choosy guests." Baynes pointed out. He increasingly made Clea think of a walrus.

"Oh…be careful if you're headed up there." Geoffrey advised. "Snakes."

Mr. Holmes managed a peculiar mannerism: it was a shudder, a shiver, a grimace, and a grotesque pulling of the face at the same time. "Thank you, Lestrade," he said seriously.

"If I may," Geoffrey asked politely. "What exactly was the cause of Sir George's death?"

"Well, if you don't mind my saying so, that's the very problem." Baynes chuckled in a most disturbing way. "He seemed to think something was amiss before he died, but to all appearances, he died of a heart attack."

Geoffrey made a face. "Never mind, then." He struck a match and touched it to the bowl in a single motion within his cupped fingers. "How is the Lady Woodrow taking her loss?"

"Lady Woodrow is still about, but remains in her rooms." Baynes answered. He was looking around as he spoke, his small eyes searching for…well, something.

Clea was about to ask if they wanted to stay to share the picnic, but Holmes was off and running back up the slope, and the policemen were following before even an "excuse me" could be made.

Clea watched them go. "If it doesn't take all kinds to make a world," she observed.

Geoffrey never missed a puff on his pipe. "Hmn." He agreed from behind a smoke wreath.

The boys collapsed on the blankets soon after, and Geoffrey appeared to be unaccountably lazy in the warm air. He chided them for not taking off their shoes first, and when that was done, reminded them of the ginger-beer they were supposed to drink. His own bottle was of a stronger vintage, and before long the late luncheon was under way.

Clea turned her Delft-blue eyes upon the lot. Every once in a while, Hazel advised, a wife should look upon her husband as if for the first time. It was good advice.

She saw a small, wiry man dressed in the cheerful restraint of the rising Middle Class, sprawled on the picnic-carpet and using a saddle for a backrest while its owner grazed. Two sleepy boys napped at his feet. A small book rested open under his pipe-less hand.

"I think Martin's improving," he said as if unaware of her gaze. "Haven't heard him cough for hours."

Clea smiled.

"What?"

"Do you wish it was your case, Inspector?" She'd seen how his gaze lingered on the departing gentlemen.

He was honest enough to be wistful as he shook his head. "Yes and no," was his frank answer. "Baynes can be difficult enough to work with…and add Mr. Holmes to the mix, I fear there wouldn't be much air left for me to breathe."

"I can imagine that." Clea looked at him fondly. "You'd like to solve it, though."

"Of course." But his voice had an odd little note, one that made her blink.

"I'd like to know what happened, of course…but this might be one of those mysteries that only get bigger."

Clea felt she knew her husband fairly well—she ought to know how he viewed his work. For the most part, "his" crimes were simple, tedious, and monotonous. "Open and shut" was not only a common turn of phrase at the Lestrade household, it was the prayer on every policeman's lips.

"What is it, dear?"

"Geoffrey, I've been married to you long enough…but I've never heard you imply a case was…in depth. Not off the top like that, just when we know barely anything about it! Isn't it too soon to tell?"

"Mr. Holmes has been hired to solve the case." Geoffrey looked at her over the tops of his eyes as he spoke, and his tobacco-smoke was heavy with irony. "He'll say it's a simple little case. You mark my words, the man's a bellwether for things unseen." He sighed and looked to the distance, where the dark slate roofs of the Arbors barely peeped above the tree-line. "He can pick and choose any case that comes to him. He chose this one. There's something more to this than meets the eye."

"Is he always this…er…informative on a case?"

"Oh, no. Sometimes he's positively opaque!" Geoffrey smiled wryly. "He keeps his cards close to his chest…but then, most of us do. We coppers do it because another one of us could just up and solve the case and take all the credit. With Mr. Holmes…I think he rather enjoys trying to get us to think along his lines." He sighed heavily. "He's a smart man, but he has his flaws. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. That's something he just doesn't seem to understand…then when I first met him…or ever."

Something passed over his face then, light as a grassblade's shadow. Clea felt a shadow of her own cross her thoughts. There was something to regret about any death to be sure. But Geoffrey knew something that he didn't want out.

And, she was growing more and more certain…the reverse was also true about Mr. Holmes and Mr. Baynes.

Quite enough to make anyone curious themselves…as well as a little frustrated.

-

Dessert, childer," Clea scolded patiently. She passed out round, flat cakes of Norfolk Biffins. "These are fresh, I'll have you know. I pressed them down in the bake-ovens the night before we left."

Clea was glad to see Geoffrey reaching for one with his good arm. Biffins were a bit of trouble, for they had to be from the specific Norfolk apple, and slow-roasted under weights that pressed the fruits flat. The next step (Clea's least favourite) was in the coring, and coating it all in sugar. One normally had to take off the sugared peel, and roll it in more sugar before eating it (with cream) but Clea couldn't stand the waste, and her husband couldn't stand the sweetness. The family compromised with a mixture that was more cinnamon and nutmeg than anything else.

Being Geoffrey, her husband was eating the whole thing, peel and all. Martin, who preferred to be silent in his displays of affection, propped against his father as he ate too. No one brought up the topic of Sir George's odd death by heart attack, or the fact that for all that the Arbors resembled a gigantic summer estate for Royalty…it was strangely empty with the lack of people to enjoy it.

Finally, Clea could take no more. "All this sunshine, and no one in it."

Geoffrey cocked his thin eyebrow at her. "No doubt saving their strength for the dancing tonight."

"Oh, yes, I'm sure." Clea answered sarcastically. "Light up enough candles, and perhaps it'll do you as much good as a few minutes in the clean open air."

Her husband chuckled. It was his way of wordless agreement.

-

They returned to riding with the boys behaving like long-experienced riders and drivers. "Sometimes it just takes a moment," their father assured them. Clea knew they wanted to try to race along the packed earth of the forest, but they also knew better than to ask for permission to get hurt. Tree-roots laddered rungs back and forth across the trail, and a stumble could mean harm to someone.

"Enjoying yourself?" He looked as though he knew the answer.

She grinned up. "I always enjoyed riding…more than my brothers did."

"That's because it's hard to find Clydesdales."

"Oh, you! They aren't that big!"

"If you say so." He grinned back.

"I used to ride with my father every week-end when we could."

"I'm sorry there haven't been more chances."

"Don't be, dear." She dismissed it easily. "I was allowed to ride, but not enough time in the kitchens."


	19. Biting

"Martin, don't eat all that tongue."

Geoffrey protested mildly. "I've already had plenty."

"Walnut sandwiches aren't the same, but if you insist…" Clea privately thought Geoffrey couldn't stand the thought of children going hungry even if he had to do without, which raised sobering possibilities on how he was raised. She changed the subject instead. "I should think you would have planted a walnut in Mrs. Collins' garden years ago. You could eat your weight in nut-meats every month."

"I'd never plant a walnut there." Geoffrey protested. "Mrs. Collins would evict us in a heartbeat."

"Is she allergic?"

"No. The trees would poison her apples, and you know her feelings for those little trees."

"I had no idea."

"Neither did I, until a seedling managed to come up in the corner-wall. You would have thought London was under an invasion."

Clea chuckled to imagine the scene. Their landlady was usually quite calm save in the matters of her little back-plot.

"I wonder what happened to those apple trees they took out of the orchard?" She wondered. "There must be at least twenty missing!"

"Could be what the fuss is on the back-gardens." Geoffrey guessed with a shrug. "They're digging holes like badgers. I hope no one falls in on their way to the maze."

"What are they having for supper tonight, Mamm?" Nicholas asked politely.

Clea was long used to this sort of question. "Several turkeys stuffed with forcemeat."

"How can you even think of the next meal?" Geoffrey shook his head in wonder.

"Cheatham blood, dear."

"No wonder your father dabbled in a life of crime once. Something had to be done to feed the lot of you…"

"Careful, Inspector. I can still toss you into a wall…even if I'd have to make the wall out here first."

"Yes, mum." He grinned at her in that cheeky way that was only acceptable when it was themselves. Clea knew of plenty a-Constables who would swear on a stack their particular Whitehall Detective Sergeant had never smiled in his life.

"Are we ready to head back?"

"Shouldn't overdo it." Geoffrey ignored the silent desperation coming from the smaller members of the picnic. "And you're going to be well inside before the dew falls, Martin!"

Martin sighed. He didn't complain. "Would there be a library here?"

"Has to be." Clea told him with authority. "At the very least, a shelf of guides for the bird-watchers."

"What kind of birds?" Nicholas piped up.

"Only the kind with feathers." Geoffrey rose to his feet, his healing arm hanging slightly loose. "Up, you. Time to break this passable camp and head back. We need to settle it all before suppertime."

"Remember, brothers!" Clea admonished. "In your best clothes, and on your best behavior!"

Geoffrey waited until they were busily engaged with packing up the back of the cart. "When did you start calling them 'brothers' together?"

"I can't say." Clea confessed. "I recall my mither would snap it out when my brothers were being…well, themselves. Her way of reminding them they belonged together, I suppose."

"In the case of Cutler and Wallace, they learnt that lesson rather well." Geoffrey joked wryly. Of all his quarrelsome in-laws, those two were the most quarrelsome with him now—which was quite the change from how it was in the beginning of their courtship and all the Cheatham men were against the potential thief of their little sister's affections.

"You know the Twins," Clea sighed. "They care little about the outside world, and their wives hover about the Odious Mrs. Masters."

"Look on the bright side. If fortune favours the foolish, she'll have that poor Wessex fellow at the altar by Christmas, and we'll be seeing much, much less of her than ever."

"Once a Jubilee is too much." Clea muttered, careful not to let the boys hear. "Best of all, she'll be marrying above her station, so she'll have to mind her power-brokering for the rest of her existence."

"Now, see? I told you there were happy endings." He offered her his good arm with a quick wink; she took it with a low laugh and they saw to their saddles.

-

"Hold on..."

Geoffrey turned his Sabino to the side with a light tug, which seemed to shock the horse. Up until this point, he'd guided it as little as possible and with a care to its mouth. "Clea, I think that's Dr. Watson up ahead."

"You can see better afar than I can, dear." Clea told him without envy. "Where is he?"

"On the other side of the clearing."

"Which, dearest, is as long as two rugby fields…"

"He rides like Dr. Watson." Geoffrey answered strangely. "Military, even though it must hurt his leg."

"I've seen you march in the Metro's parade even though it hurt your foot."

"That's not quite the same, ma-mel."

"They're waving to us, Tad." Martin twisted in his saddle to look up at his father. "Do you think he wants us to wait?"

"There's a cross-cut path on the left." His father said. "We just passed it. It bows around the wood. We'll go back and take it."

The rider came into Clea's view in degrees, like the reverse of water erasing a photograph. By the time it waved again, she could tell it was the doctor. He was dressed in a deep ruddy brown that blended with the chestnut-colored horse he rode.

"Hello, Dr. Watson!" And it was clear Geoffrey liked the man. That was well; Clea liked him too. She was also grateful to him for many different reasons.

The doctor eased his horse up on a trail littered with pine-flowers, and smiled to see them. Clea might be nearsighted, but the way his eyes lingered on Nicholas, just a bit, warmed her heart. Nicholas was alive because of the kind man, and they would never forget it.

"Hello, lady and gentlemen." He smiled as he touched his hat-brim with his gloved hand. A man such as he looked quite alone and slightly sad without someone else at his side. "I thought I would have a bit of time to ride to the folly, but it appears I misjudged the length of the trail."

"It will take you a good canter at twenty minutes." Geoffrey told him. "We were there today."

"I ought to save the trip for the morrow then, if I'm to return in time for supper." Watson openly chuckled, for it was clear he would need to attend more than that supper if he was lose his lean form. Privately, Clea mourned the gold ring on his widower's finger. A wife could make a man behave and tend to his meals. Mrs. Collins complained that a landlady could only do so much with a man's common sense when it came to nourishment. "If I may, Lestrades—what were those waggons of apple trees doing, heading up to the Arbors?"

"We never saw them, Doctor." Clea assured him. "We did see the empty spots in the orchard where the trees had been dug up."

"Looks dreadful." Geoffrey assured him. "Sticks out like a missing tooth."

"Odd time of year for transplanting…I suppose they can do it at all because of all the cool, wet weather we had first?"

"Quite possibly. You and Mr. Holmes are on a case, I take it?"

Watson smiled again, carving another depth into the slow-growing laugh lines that were overlying the marks of old grief upon his face. Clea remembered their birth; she knew it pained her as much as it did Geoffrey.

"No, I couldn't accompany Holmes." He was saying. "I would have liked to, Inspector. Truly. But Lady Woodrow's physician asked of my time and I could hardly refuse the request of a lady."

"And her own physician was content with her wanting another doctor to attend?"

"He lacked my experience with certain areas." Watson answered with a perfect lack of offense. "The lady was placed in a deep moment of emotional discomfiture upon the death of her husband." Without a shred of acting, the doctor implied that an entire army would have to cut him down with poisoned bullets before he avoided his duty.

The men talked; Clea was content to wait with the boys, and she thought.

"Come with us, Doctor." Geoffrey urged. He would never be rude enough to call him by his Baptismal name in the presence of the children. "Mr. Holmes must surely be back in his rooms by now."

"No doubt you're right." Dr. Watson answered beautifully. He doffed his hat one last time and fell behind Nicholas and Martin, who were overjoyed to have another adult to speak to—or speak at. While they flurried against him with demonstrations on the cleverness of ponies and goats, Clea pulled slightly to the front to speak with her husband.

"I'm surprised, dear. You didn't even ask him what he was seeing Lady Woodrow for."

"They're on a case." Geoffrey told her simply. "Neither of them will say more than they must. Besides…the Loch Ness Monster couldn't make Dr. Watson break his confidence with a patient."

They rode in silence for a quarter-hour, while behind them two boys and a boyish doctor kept up a cheerful spate of patter that had to do with birds, mice, the voles brought over by the Romans, fish, the coastal shingle, why one's father's best masonry hammer was the best for cracking filberts, and whether or not moss really did grow on the north side of a tree.

"Does it?" Clea whispered.

"Certainly not." Geoffrey whispered back. "I checked that one out with a compass as soon as I knew how to use one."

"I never thought of it."

"Even you can't think of everything."

"Flatterer…" She grinned up cheerfully.

"…simple enough," Dr. Watson was saying from behind. "It makes excellent tinder for the camp-fire if you let it dry. However, I wouldn't tell the ladies what it is made of…"

Geoffrey sighed. "Clea…might it be possible to just…I don't know…head off to our own devices for part of tomorrow? Let the boys wallow in the library and copy down all the learning of the world while we have a moment's peace and quiet?"

"I don't see why not." Clea assured him. "They'll be happy enough on their own for a few hours."

"There's a tavern at the depot…it serves what it claims is the perfect plate of prawns."

"Geoffrey, I should warn you that I saw the ad as well…they serve their prawns up whole."

"That's perfectly all right." Her husband answered. "I'm in the mood to bite the head off something."


	20. Dinner and a Showing

Dr. Watson gasped at the same time Geoffrey did. Clea looked wildly, followed their gaze, blinked upwards through a glare escaping the cloud-line—and discerned an alarming scene three storeys upon the air on one of the top floors of the Arbors' windows. Vines clawed up the finely worked stone, but they would have been a poor purchase for a miscalculated grab.

"Holmes!" Watson called up. "Whatever are you doing up there?"

Clea's first thought was something along the lines of, "what an unusually transparent question," before it was followed a moment later by, "Oh, yes, this is Mr. Holmes." Even in her limited experience, Mr. Holmes was seldom what he seemed.

To do him credit, Mr. Holmes appeared to have not the slightest bit of self-consciousness upon being watched from three storeys below while he scurried from the tiny one-person balcony, swung down, and with his feet hovering in the air, aimed and dropped into the one-person balcony directly below. Inspector Baynes moved out of the way barely in time. Watson made a strained sound which timed with the pounding of Clea's heart.

"I'm so glad I don't like that man," Geoffrey growled under his breath. "I'd never get a wink of sleep for the worrying."

Clea knew full well he cared about Mr. Holmes better than that, but when he was badly stirred, Geoffrey's manners were the first thing to go.

"Geoffrey, love…"

Her husband leaned closer. "Yes, dear?"

"By any chance, is that how you managed to get that rather strange stain on your coat last year when you came back from Battersea?"

He cleared his throat. "W-well…in principle…yes…"

"In principle?"

"It wasn't a balcony."

"Hmmmm…go on…"

"It was a pair of French windows."

"French windows with three inches of grime?"

"The house wasn't actually in use."

"I see. And you were gallivanting off the windows because..?"

"Because there was a two-hundred year old rose right below and the stairs inside were rotting. Hopkins had already fallen in the stair-well, and I wasn't about to get rescued too..._somebody_ had to rescue him."

"Strange. You didn't come back smelling like a rose…"

"They were graftling roses, Clea. That kind doesn't have a smell. They're just for show." He lowered his voice. "And as far as my work-performance went, I did come out of it smelling like a rose, thank you."

"I stand corrected, dear." Clea stifled an unseemly giggle while the boys tried desperately (and unsuccessfully) to eavesdrop. Above them, Baynes was peering down into the lawn not far from their trail. His face was beefy red from keeping his head downward, and his mustaches fell forward like large cat's-whiskers. "No sign," floated through the air to them, which meant absolutely nothing except whatever they were looking for didn't exist on the balcony, hedge, vines, shrubbery, walls of the Arbors, or the lawn. In the meantime, Watson had dismounted and was hurrying to get involved.

"What I don't understand," Geoffrey commented, "Is why he keeps writing in his notebook. The man doesn't forget a single thing. He could probably tell you what he ate last month. Why the notes?"

"That is a good question." Clea admitted. "And an interesting one." The late Mrs. Watson would not only have known the answer to that question, she would have answered it in a way that would have been most affectionate and amusing. Wives were good for that sort of information—they not only answered, they cut to the meat.

"Shall we stable up your horse, Doctor?" Geoffrey stood up in the stirrups to shout; his call reached the doctor just in time.

"Thank you, Lestrade!"

-

Clea brushed her skirts down while the boys assisted in the tack. Old Joe smoked from a barrel-chair, a smile re-wrinkling his face at the scene. The smoke added to the pleasant sweetness of hay, clay, and the wilting flower-wreaths some child had placed upon the wooden door. Back and forth guests went, in and out on their search for a pony, a trap, or whatever they needed for a jaunt around the Arbors before the evening formals. It made a cheerful crowd of mixed ages, and Clea was glad to be a part of it.

"Good to see young ones here," Old Joe approved. "Th'beasts favour th'children."

"I'm certain they do." Geoffrey laughed lightly. His arm must have been paining him a bit, for Clea saw how he used his left more, and kept his right hand close to his side.

"You, there." A tall man who was far too handsome for his own good with ink-black hair, bright blue eyes, and a clipped beard swept through and tossed reins at a very startled Geoffrey. "Put that up! And wait outside next time!"

Stunned into silence, the Lestrades watched the man go on his merry way.

"For a moment there," Geoffrey said slowly, and just the faintest flush stained his cheeks, "I thought I was propelled back in time, working as a livery-boy on the Plymouth Estate."

"He couldn't bother to see to his own horse?" Clea, from an equestrienne view, was shocked. "Hardly a gentleman!"

"None of our business what he is." Geoffrey said it without thinking. "The poor manners about us have nothing to do with us." He tapped the shoulder of his brown coat, which in the poor light was close to the livery of the stables. "Nor is being colour-blind."

"You say that so well…I wish you hadn't had so much practice." Clea sympathized. "Boys, I don't see you finishing your tasks."

Geoffrey regarded the large horse thoughtfully. It was an impressive brute, coal-black like his rider's hair, and trimmed to the last quarter-inch. It smelled like spearmint and tobacco. "Selected for your looks, I see." He said to the great black head. "Good thing they take care of you."

"Aye…That was Sir George's usual horse." Old Joe piped up. "Will have the honour of his funeral ceremony on the week-end."

"He's been fed well." Geoffrey said mysteriously.

"Sir George saw to it himself." Old Joe answered just as oddly.

Horsemen. Clea had seen it a hundred times. They had their own way of talking, just like women could bewilder a man with discussions of the technical aspects of needles going by the gauge, or the weight of cloth. To her it was perfectly ordinary, and she still needed reminders that Geoffrey wouldn't know a Number Nine Needle from an ice-pick if she asked him to pick one up on the way home.

Come to think of it…would an ice-pick work as a Number Nine in an emergency? Clea was tantalized at the thought. "Hustle up, brothers," she clapped her hands together. "You'll need a proper bath before the festivities tonight!"

-

"Next time," Geoffrey said under his breath in the privacy of their too-large rooms, "we can just leave the boys in the tub. They'll never notice we're gone."

"Call that indoor watering-pond a tub?" Clea wondered. "Two Cheathams and the Royal Mortician would have room in that thing."

Geoffrey snorted, surprised into a high level of amusement. "I have it on good authority your brothers have bathed in many a watering-pond."

"Yes, outdoors in the pastures and miles from the nearest person who would be shocked out of their senses at the sight of a Cheatham with a cake of soap." Clea sniffed quite loudly in the wake of decades piled upon various exasperations.

"I thought they were quite concerned about their appearances." Geoffrey puzzled. "At least, when they were trying to pound me into suet they were taking care that it didn't ruin their wardrobes."

"That's because they'd have to answer to the state of said wardrobe to the women-folk when they got home…oh, I'm just being testy. They try to keep clean; Bartram especially. He says it makes him look more respectable in the ring."

"Lord, as if anyone would have a problem with respecting a man that stands six foot six and twohundredweight of muscle…" A splash caught his attention. "Sounds like someone's sinking a shallow-draft boat in there."

"I'm just grateful our children know how to swim."

"If they didn't, they'd certainly know by the end of today." Geoffrey smiled at her as he arranged his cuff. The poor arm was still notably paler than the other. Strange to think that even a little sun could get through all the layers of cloth a decent gentleman wore in springtime…

"Did you see the hearse?" He asked under his breath while the children splashed away.

"I did see." Clea answered in the same voice. She was trying to sit and comb out the little elf-knots within her blue-black locks. Without seeming to, he merely tricked the comb into his hand and started working on her hair as she sat.

Clea felt deep contentment in this action. It also gave her a moment's respite before she slipped into her proper yet annoying shoes for the evening.

"What I wonder," she said to her husband's reflection as he patiently slipped the teeth through lock after lock, "is…what that peculiar crest was all about."

"What did you notice?"

"That was a strange one. I didn't recognize it." Geoffrey looked over the top of his head, his dark eyes considering. "The label1 means the first-born son," he said at last, "but you know, Woodrow isn't a titular surname." He sounded angry at himself. "I didn't think of it, even years ago when I first encountered the—well, the widow."

"There's the lunel,2" Clea reminded him. "Woodrow might have been a common enough name, but the lunel could mean the ancestor did something to please the sovereign and now they are favoured." Her brow wrinkled up. Woodrow was about as common a name as it could get; it came from "Wooden Row" or, a street of wooden houses.

"Can't have been too long ago, or they would have changed their name to honour the Monarch who favoured them." Geoffrey gnawed the problem over. "There's probably hundreds upon hundreds of crests in the books, so it's no wonder I didn't recognize it, but still…"

"Still it's an annoyance." Clea tilted backwards to smile up at him. "Well, we shall just keep the question in the back of the stove, shall we? Let it simmer until it's done."

He laughed. "Your recipe for success, dear?"

"Hush. The childer think I can do anything."

"They're not all wrong." He kissed the top of her head. "What will you be wearing?"

"The pieces your grandfather sent of course. What else goes with sea-silk?"

"I hope you checked that amber for signs of secret burial." Geoffrey grumbled without heat to it. Everyone knew a gift from that old smuggler was probably unearthed from a cache decades ago, or won in a card game, or just outright stolen from someone who had grossly offended the little old man (commanders in the French military were particularly vulnerable).

He was a clever, sly old man, a grasshopper of guile, and his gifts were made to be easily taken apart. Clea's amber was set in a way that each piece could be converted into something else—in this case she had contrived a looping necklace, eardrops, and a dependant on a bracelet.

It went beautifully with the golden sea-silk Geoffrey had passed to her before their marriage. Clea smiled at the memories whenever she saw it.

"Oh, bother." Geoffrey panicked for a moment while digging in the small coffer, and visibly relaxed as he pulled out the cufflinks for the boys. Clea laughed at his expression.

"You looked ready to faint dead away!" She exclaimed.

"For what we paid for these…" Geoffrey shuddered. "Which of our sons will lose them first?"

"Are you making a wager?" Clea tucked another pin into her hair. "Offhand, I would say Nick. He adores them so much, he's always fiddling about with them."

Very rarely, Clea found her husband in complete and utter agreement with her family and she out in the cold. It didn't happen often, but in the case of the boys' pieces, it was a stellar moment. Old enough to wear the accoutrements of men, the boys had received Christmas gifts of their first adult sets: their own cufflinks and tie-pins to match the new watches from their Grandfather Cheatham. The collaboration had been 100% male concentration, and the boys couldn't have been more thrilled if they'd been told to give up school for six years. With their coloring, only deep blue and gold could have fit. Geoffrey had all but vanished weeks before the holiday, out on strange errands and late hours, and there had been more than a few meetings over coffee with his brothers-in-laws.

Martin's pattern had been selected with his love of learning. His first Shepherd's Watch hung upon his watch-chain, and the design was engraved on his cufflinks and tie-pin. Being Martin, he had hopes that someday his diligence would be rewarded so he could have a lunar dial for finding the stars at night.

Nicholas had been the cause of much worrying, but finally, the lapis-lazuli had been found with an Egyptian vulture sigil. "Everyone else has a bloody scarab," Geoffrey had explained later. "If it gets nicked, we'll have better luck finding it in the pawnshop."

Nicholas adored it. He adored it as much as his Hunter's Watch even though he no longer had the excuse of "letting the time slip by" for being late on his jaunts.

Geoffrey didn't suit more than ruddy tones, and he was wearing his usual gold with red stone. While he swore he was too lazy to bother with building up a collection of pieces (as if the word 'lazy' would be in the same sentence with him), Clea suspected he was just more concerned with other things—and keeping up with two rambunctious boys was enough for three grown men.

-

The boys had faced a plethora of character-improvement attempts on part of their various aunts and uncles; a fancy dress supper and ball was hardly going to impress them. They wore their black suits with careless ease (or perhaps their faith in their mother's sewing). Nicholas was the larger son, but there was no doubt Martin was the elder. He had a studied way of looking about him that marked a maturity beyond his years. They walked together, Martin taking his mother's side as was his usual habit.

Clea hated how the delicate washes of daylight could be so easily swallowed at dusk. The bright gas-lights that were shaped to look like candles and they gleamed sharply, casting their own shadows upon the marble floor and walls. The depression was offset, she thought, by the brightly coloured dresses and jewelry of the women. The men were more subtle in their black dinnerwear—performing the function of the space between the colours of the women. The combination made everyone stand out all the brighter.

"Not our usual crowd." Geoffrey whispered. "None of these lot look as though they know what to do at a ring dance."

"I can't imagine them wearing garlands and leaves anyway. It's just as well."

One of the waiters, who had been in the kitchen while Clea filled up on gossip with Viola and her kitchen grande dame, gave them a smile of recognition and with a slightly circumspect glint to his eyes, seated them at one of the gigantic round tables by the fireplace—conveniently close to the impressive display of wine. Martin smiled to hold the chair out for his mother.

Clea noted that some people (whom, she certainly didn't know), were taking note of their arrival.

"I think we were given the good table," Geoffrey whispered.

"That's what happens when one makes friends in high places." Clea smiled back. "You need to tell your grandfather his little Christmas gifts are coming to great use."

He passed her a fond expression of mock-exasperation as he unfolded his napkin—Clea's "friends in high places" was always the help, and they were indeed valuable to have about. Assuming they weren't vindictive. "There you are, dear."

"I see the arrogant puff-head who took you for the groom." Clea whispered. "He doesn't even notice who you are."

"Good job I brought my best suit." Geoffrey smiled wryly. "I wonder who else is joining us?" There were still plenty of empty spots.

"I think that's Dr. Watson by the wall." Clea whispered. "You know, the man's letting his weight drop again. That's not healthy."

"I don't think he's letting his weight drop." Geoffrey whispered back. "I think he's just burning off his fuel running after Mr. Holmes and skipping meals in the effort."

"Poor Mrs. Hudson." Clea said with feeling. She knew how it felt for one's efforts in the kitchen to go unrewarded…and unknown.

"Hst, here he comes…and here he comes." Geoffrey added.

Clea knew what that meant. Dinner with Mr. Sherlock Holmes was about to be an interesting experience.

"Got your armour on?" Geoffrey asked into his waterglass.

"Being sly, are we?"

"Sly, nothing. I'm convinced that man knows how to read lips.—Martin, stop bouncing lights off your watch, please."

1 A design resembling the top of a rook in the chessboard.

2 Four crescent moons facing each other, meaning the person has won the favour of the sovereign, and also has hope of greater glory.


	21. The Mustard Seed of Revenge

"Hello there, young Messers Lestrade." Dr. Watson gave the brothers a ready smile as he took a chair on the other side of their father. He was an expert in these fields of society, and spared nothing to his wardrobe when it came to a night out of Baker Street. Despite the loss of hard-won weight, he retained his healthy brown, and Clea accidentally drew the comparison between their new dining companion and the bronzed complexions of several blatant soldiers in the room. _They wear it with pride_, she thought, astonished she hadn't seen it before. _Being burnt by foreign suns is another mark of their Service_. He even dressed to an eye for it—at least, he did not scorn to hide it, and his dinnerwear had a positively militaristic simplicity to its cuts. With patient amusement, Clea pretended to be unaware of some longing feminine gazes.

His companion was no less the gentleman, but his suit displayed a more elaborate style and his adornment was the stuff of legends: the snake-ring given by the King of Bohemia rested on his little finger and other little tokens of higher esteem were here and there. Clea would not have ordinarily thought green would be his colour (normally the eyes or hair were the deciding factor), but against his assembly of contrasts, it actually worked quite well with his black hair and pale skin. Grey was considered gauche by some; green, the next-closest shade, might have been a balm to their propriety.

It occurred to her that a gift from someone so important would eventually be a millstone about the neck. Mr. Holmes was almost obligated to display the fact that he had been favoured. Geoffrey said once in a great while he actually got the urge to wear the "trinkets" and then put them up again.

"I'm sure he doesn't think a gift from a nobleman is a trinket!" Clea had protested around her laughter.

Geoffrey had merely elevated his brow with a smile. "I'm using his word, dear. And that's what he called them. Trinkets."

"Mrs. Lestrade," Holmes nodded his head upon her. It would have been imperious, were it not for the distracted air.

"Mr. Holmes." Clea returned the nod with a smile. "I have it on good authority the wines will be the pride of the borough tonight."

"Ah, I wondered if they employed the local masters of the vine." Holmes' quick mind was already flashing off to something that had occurred to him. "An excellent soil for the grape. One hears of the occasional discovery of a Roman winery in this part of Britain."

"And grape liquor." Geoffrey muttered under his breath, sounding much aggravated at those who would make their way by dodging certain taxable revenues and doubly complicating a poor Inspector's life.

"Are you ready for the dancing tonight?" Watson, bless him, always had a smile for Nicholas. It was a warming sight, as too many people tended to angle in on Martin—who could hardly help being different enough that he attracted unwanted attention. The good doctor seemed to understand instinctively that everyone, especially Martin, was relieved when Nick had a moment to shine. "I saw you were quite the participant at the jigs last spring." Those expressive brown eyes twinkled. "It couldn't have been an easy thing to jig while playing the flute. However did you learn?"

"I suppose I never thought about it, sir." Nicholas explained politely. "I thought that if the tabor and drum folks could play a flute and beat a drum at the same time while marching in a parade, I ought to be able to do two things at once." He smiled bashfully.  
"I hope I know whatever steps they'll be having."

"It will be the usual boring maneuvers." Sherlock Holmes said in a strange tone of voice. Despite the activity witnessed earlier in the day, he appeared to be brimming with a restless energy. Long, lean fingers that seemed overly pale to Clea were moving over his sleeves in that particular movement of self-grooming she found exclusive to men. He was, she was impressed to note, far more swift about it than most men. Only the slightest brush was required to let him know if his cufflinks, tiepin, watch and buttons were all in place.

Just as Clea was thinking to herself that Mr. Holmes was interesting, a fearsome example of womanhood swept by, cooing in a very unctuous manner to her escort. Clea thought about grimacing, but didn't. Mr. Holmes was unable to resist that urge, and the way his face spasmed within itself suggested an unusual amount of pain.

Clea surprised herself with her own empathy.

"Enough of this." Mr. Holmes announced with that unnerving abruptness that was so much a part of his demeanor. Watson, long used to this, never jumped but Martin nearly dropped his water goblet. "There will be much dancing after the supper. Watson? I trust you will find some way to amuse yourself?"

"I have a few plans." Watson smiled cheerfully.

"Excellent." Mr. Holmes murmured. "Well, well! I see we have new and distinguished company tonight."

Of course they had to look across the open spot at the table where chairs were still unclaimed. A rather familiar looking person was striding across the Persian carpets as he fussily adjusted a single white rose at his lapel.

Much to Clea's horror (she doubted she stood alone), Mr. Holmes jumped to his feet lightly as thistledown and beckoned with his long fingers. "My good Lord Meredith; we are delighted to see the Viscount is looking so well."

Various tints of horror washed across his dining companions: The first one being the usual horror upon realizing one is about to share a dining-space with someone approximately four hundred years above one in society. The following variation of horror was realizing Mr. Holmes had committed a social gaffe by referring to His Lordship by his title. The third horror was in the slow-dawning realization that he had done so deliberately; in order let the others know who exactly he was inviting over to the table.

A bead of sweat stood out on Geoffrey's brow as he led the others to the proper stand of respect, which was accepted with a half-conscious nod; they sat down after he did—all except Mr. Holmes, who had not stood at all.

Clea came to what she hoped was her last unpleasant realization of the night: Mr. Holmes flouted convention because he was simply too impatient to put up with it. And the peerage and gentry tolerated it of him, the way a large dog demonstrated its patience by not barking at an annoying, smaller pup.

Clea began to suspect that Mr. Holmes truly didn't prefer the dance of social ranking. There were many ways in which a man might revenge himself upon an annoyance. It was too bad that his forms were mistaken for eccentricity.

"Papa…" Martin squeaked faintly. His eyes were large. "Isn't h…"

"It's perfectly all right, Martin." Geoffrey said quietly. "Don't forget to drink plenty of water, eh?"

"Yes, sir…" Martin cleared his throat behind his napkin. He recovered his composure with admirable speed and accepted the waiter's deposit of small breads with graceful courtesy.

Clea noted that from behind the protective wall of thin crystal and water before her husband's face, Geoffrey was adopting a _particular_ look. It was that slightly glazed expression he donned when dealing with unpleasant people.

There was also just a touch of deep abiding fear in his dark eyes.

And that made Clea worry too. Geoffrey could read Martin's expression better than she could at this angle. The way Geoffrey was stifling his concern was as clear as a buoy in a harbour: Martin did not like His Lordshop's earlier highhandedness with his father in the stables.

Martin had the cleverness of his mother, and the sheer stubbornness of his father. He had the capacity for his mother's gift of subtle revenge, but he was too young to actually bother about it.

The Viscount had no idea he was being plotted against by a young boy with the face of a sober angel and the mental powers of a grown adult.

With, Geoffrey had moaned once, the moral flexibility of a mudlark after a flood.

It did not help matters that the boy had come by his bag of mixed blessings honestly.


	22. To Fish or Not to Fish

Bless the Dr. Watsons of the world. Clea sipped water that tasted of a mineral spring, and grew more and more appreciative of that rare species. Mr. Holmes and His Lordship were soon involved in their own conversation, which had to do with something about depreciating shares in lead mines throughout various portions of the globe.

Lead mines. Could there be anything as deathless as the topic of lead? And yet for some men it would appear the subject was spun of fascination.

"Lead mines and discretion, is that not the way of the world, Lord Meredith?" Mr. Holmes was practically beaming with his eyes slit half-shut in a way that made Clea glad she was not His Lordship…she was also grateful she couldn't find such things interesting. Her own family would have ostracized her just to protect their own sanity.

It wasn't fair that Geoffrey couldn't hear more than one word out of ten where he was sitting. He was mostly ignorant of the agonies his wife was suffering.

"Nicholas, is that the watch you were saving for?" The doctor asked in a way to get the conversation on their side of the table. "You told me you wanted your own timepiece."

Nicholas almost grinned but recalled his manners in time. "I'm still saving for that one, Dr. Watson, thank you. This is a Christmas gift." He held it up to show. "Martin's is almost the same."

"That is an excellent engraving," Was the exclamation. "I don't often see such delicate traceries. Whoever did this must have a very small hand."

Martin oh-so-soberly lifted the hand in question.

Dr. Watson was delighted. "That was you, Mr. Martin?"

"It wasn't easy." Martin said modestly.

"I should say not. I can see every feather on the vulture. It isn't a purely Egyptian style, but I can see you did it deliberately. Now it has a distinct British influence. Where did you find the inspiration?"

"On a tombstone." Martin answered with beautiful poise. "I knew Nicholas would have preferred the Cobra of the Nile, but Mother wouldn't approve."

"Even the image of a snake is more than enough." Clea said firmly. "When you grow up and move into the zoological gardens, you can have all the snakes you want."

Nicholas brightened.

"You can't really move into the gardens, Nicholas." Geoffrey murmured.

"Well done." Watson passed the watch back. "I understand about your fascination with serpents, my lad. I don't know how often I've pointed out that the emblem of my profession requires two upon Hermes' Staff.

"Isn't one poisonous, the other harmless?" Martin asked, caught in a rare moment of being interested in animals—then again, it was really about history and science.

"That is a common belief, but no. They are both Aesclapian snakes—nonvenomous. On rare occasions they will battle each other, hence the legend of one being "good" and the other "bad." Did you know the Romans took them everywhere in the world they built their healing temples?" He chuckled to their head-shakes. "I confess I've often been interested in them, because they really aren't the most dramatic or beautiful example. They're even dull to look at."

"That reminds me…we aren't going back to the Roman Folly?" Geoffrey asked, sotto voce, to his wife.

"There must be plenty of _other_ sights to see."

"Won't argue with that!" Geoffrey promptly put concentrated on his soup for the rest of the course.

All well and good for Geoffrey—he was successfully remaining ignorant of the increasingly bizarre conversation between Mr. Holmes and the Viscount because he was running referee with the boys. Whatever lead mining shares had to do with the state of the world today, Clea couldn't imagine.

It was high time to start plumbing for gossip in the guise of solicitous concern for a fellow woman.

"Dr. Watson, if I may be so bold," She began with the appropriate amount of sympathy (in other words, down to the bare minimum), "how is the Lady Woodrow? I had wished to thank her for her time during our stay, but I have no desire to inconvenience a person."

After over a decade of marriage, she was pleased to note Geoffrey no longer strangled over such announcements. He learned cautiously, bless him, but he did learn and he had an enviable instinct for survival.

She wondered why the Viscount was suddenly paying attention.

"She has had a shock, it is true." Watson paused to wipe his mouth—fruit soups were delicious but risky to the shirt-front. "But there was a provision in her late husband's will that demanded the Arbors continue on with as little break to schedule as possible. For the sake of his wishes, she is delaying the signs of mourning until this weekend."

"Well, I have heard of stranger." Clea answered calmly.

"Have you?" Holmes asked as if that was actually of interest to him.

Momentarily puzzled, Clea glanced at Geoffrey, but he looked just as puzzled. "Why, yes. You hear all sorts of things in our professions." The Viscount nearly lost his composure at that; Clea recalled too late that among some circles, a woman ought to never have a "profession." She paused delicately, and spent a moment regretting the gap in comprehension.

Geoffrey came to his wife's rescue. "A funeral is no excuse for leaving work, Mr. Holmes." He spoke carefully, exquisitely aware of his children at the table. "Even were it my own sons' funeral…I would not be permitted the luxury of being late for work." There was a distinct lack of bitterness in that announcement. It was far too flat and dead for something as alive as emotion.

Criticize his betters? Not _her_ husband. But Clea remembered clearly the long evenings at the supper-table while he pored over the newspaper and swore over the members of Parliament who saw no need to make a legal dispension for mourning.

"_I'll take the reprimand." He would say with heat as he crushed the pages in his strong hands and threw the ball to the cook-stove. "I'll take the sodding reprimand for coming in late. There are rules, and then there are rules. I'll take the suspension in pay, and whatever."_

"_I wouldn't want you to lose your livelihood!" Clea had protested at last._

"_Livelihood? Blasted prigs." He grabbed his teacup with poor grace. "I'll hire myself as a butler before I apologise."_

"_You won't be hiring yourself out as a butler, for heavens' sake!" Clea exclaimed. "You'd make a more believable secretary or a bodyguard!"_

"_Hah!" He threw his head back to give his laughing-spell the attention it deserved. "Me as a bodyguard! Your brothers would take it hard, dear. "Death by laughter" wouldn't look at all good on a tombstone!"_

"_Oh, you!" Clea picked up the nearest object—which happened to be a bread-roll—and lobbed it at him. With impressive reflexes he snatched it out of the air. "There, you see? Don't you be doing the same thing with a bullet, now!"_

"_Not to worry. I'd rather eat one of your rolls over a piece of lead any day…"_

"I hope the next Parliament will be that much closer to ending such regulations." Dr. Watson could sympathize, and he did. "It was not so long ago that we soldiers had to endure bewildering conflicts over policy and responsibility."

"You're too kind." Clea picked up the thread again; Geoffrey had already put his neck out for her as it was. "I'm certain reason will prevail. If not now, then later."

-

They broke the last of the bread together, and Clea wondered at the little glances that came their way. She and Geoffrey were so accustomed to moving together in harmony (the size of their rooms hardly allowed for independent movement, much less an obtrusive personality), that they barely noticed their personal choreography was entwined.

Possibly they weren't accustomed to seeing him in the domestic role; Clea smugly failed to blame their fellow diners for the lack of insight. The same obstinate focus that was his best asset in solving cases was the same focus that allowed him to stop thinking of work once he got home (if he allowed himself).

She knew a part of him felt as left out of this case as the last boy on the play-field, but at the same time, to be involved would risk the censure of the Yard: a man who took another's case from him made no friends, but many enemies. Geoffrey held no love for Mr. Baynes, but he did owe him his loyalty as a fellow Inspector.

Almost by accident, the deathless topic across the table had moved to something moderately less boring: fishing. Clea was more interested in the aspects of fishing once the catch met hot cast-iron, but she could intellectually appreciate why men liked to fish.

"Mrs. Lestrade," Dr. Watson again graciously incorporated her into the conversation, although bless him, it wasn't necessary. "I beg your pardon. Are you interested in fishing?"

Clea chuckled under her breath and gave the expected answer. "Quite so, doctor. My interest begins the moment the catch of the day touches the pan…unless of course, Geoffrey has the smoking-box up."

Dr. Watson smiled, which was a complete show of strong, white teeth and sparkling eyes. He was indeed a fierce warrior to be so oblivious to the admiring female gazes pointed in his direction. Even his cufflink was subject of long-distant adoration. Clea could see out the corner of her eye that Geoffrey was enjoying himself by noting the same thing she did. She hoped their composure would stand fast.

"The act of fishing is normally a man's interest." The Viscount said directly at her for the first time. He was gallantly according her an excuse for not being interested.

Hmmn…Clea couldn't quite let that go unmet…

"I would venture it is the nature of man, Your Lordship." Clea rested her fork upon her plate. "Men simply enjoy pursuit; it is in their instincts."

He smiled at that; a thick black mustache adorning a mouth. "Really, Mrs. Lestrade?"

"Everything a man does is some sort of Chase. A philosopher might blather on about the right to the pursuit of happiness, but I don't think most men bother about such abstract terms." Now that she was in this subject—she was committed all the way. It didn't help that every set of eyes was now glued to her like birdlime.

"Men think in the concrete, and in those terms the pursuit of happiness means the pursuit of the next meal, a book to enjoy, the pursuit of language as a tool, or scientific discovery…the pursuit of a sense of accomplishment in a job well done, or even the pursuit of Romance." As if there was any doubt, but she had to be a bit less bold for the sterling company at the table…

"I see." His Lordship tilted his head slightly. "And you speak from your personal observation?"

Clea could not completely hold the smile down on her face. Neither could Geoffrey. It was probably a bit of nerves on both of them. "I'm not certain our engagement qualified as a pursuit, did it dear?"

"Ah." Geoffrey had to clear his throat solely to keep the guffaw at bay. "I think it was less pursuit and more of a complicated dance maneuver."

(which to this day amazed the Cheathams for his ability to emerge relatively unscathed from their overbearing affections).

"If that is so, Mrs. Lestrade, then it is no wonder the common vernacular for "pursuit" is also for "going fishing."

"I would of course agree with His Lordship."

"There are excellent opportunities for fishing across the Arbors. Perhaps," the Viscount's peculiar gray-green eyes flitted upon Geoffrey at that point, "we should do some pursuing of our own tomorrow."

Geoffrey could hardly deny his interest, as he had just confessed it to Dr. Watson at the table not ten minutes past. "That sounds interesting, Your Lordship." He used the same tone of voice he used when dealing with dangerous yet irrational people.

"Excellent! Bring you own pole! We shall make it an event!"

-

Thank god, another meal endured. Geoffrey was no doubt sublimating the need to have Mr. Holmes quietly garroted for an unmarked grave until after they were back to the sooty comforts of London. It had been a relief to wander outside to the palazzo while the musicians slowly prepared to launch the next phase of the guests' entertainment.

"Papa," Martin was tugging on his father's sleeve like a much younger boy. "His Lordship recognized you over supper."

"He did, Martin?" Geoffrey asked softly.

"He's not happy." Martin added succinctly.

"Well…thank you for the warning, mab." Geoffrey rested his large hand on his son's shining head. They looked two of a kind in that moment. While they were close, it wasn't the sort of closeness that needed much communication. Often it was misinterpreted as British Reserve on part of her proper husband and her overly matured son.

"Bring my own pole." Geoffrey looked over his son's flattened cowlick and met his wife dead in the eye. "I'm so glad I thought to bring my own pole with me." He caught Nicholas' bewildered expression. The boy was just opening his mouth when he explained: "A joke to myself, Nick. When you're older you'll understand."


	23. Wits and Halfwits

Dr. Watson had broken from a small knot of guests and limped forward. "Excuse me," he nodded, ever proper to a lady. "Lestrade," he began with his voice low, "I don't know what is going on, but I'm not planning to go fishing tomorrow. Would you like to use my pole?"

Geoffrey smiled. "That's perfectly all right, Dr. Watson. I won't need a pole." He shook the worried doctor's hand. "Thank you all the same."

Dr. Watson paid him one last nod and looked like he still would like to be assured, but the poor man's discretion was choking him.

"Please, do let me know if there is anything I can do for the poor Lady Woodrow," Clea rested her gloved hand on his arm and smiled, which never failed to bring the desired results. Dr. Watson melted before her will. "It would be a shame if there was some way to help that I would not take."

"I shall bring up the very subject tomorrow morning." The good man said with a sincere beam. "If—"

"Watson!" A familiar cry scissored through the air.

"I beg your pardon. I assure you I shall have the answer to your kind query tomorrow, Mrs. Lestrade." He spared a quick nod to her husband. "Mr. Lestrade…young masters…good-evening—"

"There you are, Watson!"

The Lestrades watched him go in silence.

"He isn't that tall," Clea marveled. "How is it he can appear like a giant in a crowd?"

"He's larger than life." Geoffrey sniffed. "That's all."

"That's all, is it?" She turned and grinned at him, her face poised so no one could see her scandalous expression.

"Yes, that's all. Giants are big, castles are cold, rocks hurt when they hit you, water has a way of getting you wet every time…Mr. Holmes is larger than life."

"You have a great gift for deconstructing the mysterious in life, dearest. I can't wonder at how Mr. Holmes is so often annoyed at you." They laughed together and a scrap of music slipped out of the raised tier. Geoffrey swept her into a brief waltz, which lasted until the unknown musician gave up on his E-string. They stopped with the music, and returned to the balcony-carvings where Nicholas and Martin were squabbling over the what sort of stone leaves were decorating the miniature roman columns of the rail.

"They should be acanthus leaves." Martin protested. "It's a Corinthian column!"

"Well it looks like mulberry to me." Nicholas shot back stubbornly.

"It's not mulberry! It's just a bad acanthus!"

"Papa!" Nicholas protested.

"I," their father retorted with the beautiful poise of a man invited into a problem that is none of his business, "know nothing about art."

"What about the Egyptian forgeries?" Nicholas protested.

"That's different. That's in the line of duty. I didn't go to school to learn about it; I had to follow a wheezing Egyptologist about for a month."

"That sounds better than an education." Nicholas sulked.

"It isn't. Half the time I was just pouring his coffee." Geoffrey sternly tapped his knuckle on the top of his son's head. "At any rate, these are modern knock-offs and they can't possibly be the same as the old stuff. I wouldn't know an acanthus leaf from a cigar-wrap." He laughed at their expressions. "Why don't you go play with the draughts in the corner until the dancing starts?"

"Martin's tired of playing draughts." Nicholas sighed.

"He won't be tired of these draughts." Geoffrey assured them. "Go take a look at them."

Clea watched them vanish. "What would be so special about a game of draughts?"

"They're made of blown glass…so is the board."

"Do we trust our sons with something breakable?"

"The whole set-up's the size of a billiards-table! Want to play a game later when they're tired of lifting two-pound pieces about?"

"Are you so determined to prove I'm not a proper lady?"

"Correct a lady? Never."

"What a clever way of not saying I'm a liar." Clea laughed. Another strain of music, much more skilled wafted up. Someone added a chaunter to it for company. This time a more of the couples drifted into a light waltz. "Speaking of lying…I can't imagine Dr. Watson's baldfaced offer."

"He's a kind man." Geoffrey agreed. "Patient as a glacier."

"Well that was a shameless lie he gave you just now. Giving up fishing for a day!"

Geoffrey glanced about to make certain they were not being overhead. "He does seem to love fishing."

"Do you know what Mrs. Watson told me once?" Clea didn't wait for an answer, but as she rested her hand on her husband's shoulder, whispered in his ear: "She said that if all of God's Creatures had their own Bible, then her husband would be in the one for the Salmonids."

"Oh, dear me."

"Do you know where the front of the Bible has the page following the frontspiece, and there's usually something inspiring or frightening right after? She felt instead of the usual horned and cloven Devil, her husband would be on that page, bringing the doomed sinner trout to the everlasting flames of a frying pan and salt."

"You enjoy torturing me, you are aware of this?" His composure was admirable, save for a slight quiver in his voice that matched the trembling on his bottom lip. "Lucky for you, my dear, I've gotten quite skilled at holding in the outrageous things you say until I can get to someplace private."

"Yes, I have noticed your skill in the field. However did you develop it before I came around?"

Geoffrey didn't say a thing in response. He didn't have to. He simply spared a single glare-arrow into the crowd where Sherlock Holmes had been last seen.

"Silly me."

"I adore you anyway."

"That's just as well. Because I adore you for plenty enough reasons."

"My ability to fish isn't one of them, I hope." He grumbled mildly.

"What are you going to do?" She whispered. "Geoffrey, you know as well as I do, the little games these people play. We're nothing more than a bit of amusement to them. If these were the old days, they'd be sticking apples on our heads for target practice!"

"I'm not convinced that doesn't still happen at times," he growled. For a moment, a flash of anger sparked in his eyes, like brown flint striking steel.

"We're on holiday, dear. We shall enjoy ourselves if it kills us."

"Rather like a weekend with your brothers."

"Yes, rather. The difference is you won't be getting a taunt or challenge every other half-hour."

"Right you are. No wonder I've been so tense. I'm not used to this level of peace. Especially around regular people." Geoffrey's frequent complaint that to spend the day with his in-laws was comparable to Gulliver dining with giants was a nonstop source of delight to her brothers.

She chuckled and pressed her hand within his. "Shall we dance, Inspector?"

"We shall."

And they put it all out of their minds as they joined the march of swirling couples upon the marble floor. The hours stretched past midnight, until they had their hands full ushering sleepy sons to their rooms without the brothers falling over their own feet. It was a coordinated effort to put them under the covers and see to their own dress, but Clea fell into the mattress with a deep sigh of contentment. Geoffrey curled his arms around her and was asleep as quick as that, his weak arm sensibly lowered across the pillows.

She had not danced her fill for a long, long time, and it had been wonderful. She was now so tired the bed appeared to be floating about her, like a gently-moving ship in a calm sea.

Almost asleep herself, her mind wandered into peaceful channels as she unwound, thread by thread.

Until a thought sent her wide awake.

She remembered the dinner all over again. The Viscount did not strike her first impressions of someone who was all that trustworthy. He had behaved in an unseemly manner to one of the other guests; that made him angry. There would be some sort of accounting in this. And it all tied in to those wretched fish. Angling was a gentleman's sport—mostly because one needed a ridiculous amount of play-money to afford the equipment if one did not want to fashion it with their own hands. Clea's "twin" brothers Cutler and Wallace were living proof that it was an expensive hobby.

That lot was not practical, like she or Geoffrey was. Geoffrey was so utterly practical she had to worry about his odds of getting out of tomorrow's challenge intact.

It was really unfair, she stewed. A practical person had no time for grudges or getting back at imagined revenges. Half-witted minds caused the worst sort of damage! She had no idea what tomorrow would bring.

And with that less than comforting thought, Clea closed her eyes and went promptly to sleep.

She knew her wits—all of them--needed to be in good shape in the morning.


	24. A Reservation for Humiliation

Dr. Watson allowed the hotel room door to shut behind him with more force than needed.

"Come, come, Watson." Holmes said patiently as he nipped to the far end of their palatial rooms.

The doctor scowled and folded his arms across his chest—a sulking mannerism for a boy, but when that boy has grown and adopted a mustache, it leaves the realm of amusing and ventures into the slightly worrisome. "I cannot like that man." He declared.

"Of course you cannot. You are an honest man, and he is not." Holmes found his replacement collar and cuffs and jumped out of his wilted parallels. "The Viscount is raised upon politics at birth. The entire caste is without emotions of any value."

"It isn't value that would take the time to sponsor a little humiliation upon an ordinary police inspector?" Watson wanted to know. "Because he was bored?"

"Not even that, I daresay. He had to create some sort of conversation to have something to do at the table, after all." Holmes sniffed as proudly as a plough-horse upon a new green. "And he is not as intelligent as he thinks he is. Possibly a coward as well."

Watson needed a moment to catch on to what his friend was saying. His jaw fell open. "Holmes! When you gave that insulting introduction at the table…you were trying to provoke him?"

Holmes had found a spot on his new collar just barely large enough to be seen by the naked eye from fourteen inches. With a snarl he ripped it off and resumed digging for a third. "Well of course I was provoking him, Watson! Surely you noticed!"

"No, I didn't notice, Holmes!" Watson sputtered. "I was too busy reminding myself of threescore examples of you being blithely ignorant of society!" He gave up, went to his own suitcase, and without having to look, pulled a fresh collar out and handed it over. Holmes gave up searching for his own collar (he would find it later in his shaving-kit, wrapped around a tooth-brush). He flipped it open and with a broad smile began with the buttons. "Or have you just been acting all these years, in a way of pretending ignorance in order to make sallies against the upper-crust clients that attempt to trod upon you?"

"Oh, no, Watson. I assure you. In the formation of my brain-attic, I long ago threw out the permanent clutter of nobles and titular grievances and warfares…you may have noticed that there are those who can effortlessly move amongst that strange, glittering lot with the most heightened sense of awareness on how to perform for each and every individual poppet in power…" Holmes shuddered like a dowsed bird. "One rarely finds them useful in any other capacity…such is the tragedy in how their brains have been taken up and over by the need to be popular."

Watson had recalled something. "You called him a coward?"

"He was bored and annoyed, and he used false logic in his conclusion that I and Lestrade must be allies of some sort on this case…so he took his annoyance out on Lestrade."

To Watson's horror, Holmes was smiling. "You can't find it amusing!"

"My dear fellow, I do. I very much do. His Lordship has decided to go rabbit-hunting with torpedos."

"I don't follow you, Holmes. I truly do not." Watson sank to the side of his bed. "I saw Mrs. Lestrade. She knows what is happening here. A petty humiliation is being planned and I feel we ought to do something about it!"

"It ought to be said for the record (to use my own words against me, Watson), that Mrs. Clea Lestrade is in possession of a very healthy self-esteem. It is _much_ healthier, in fact, than her husband's, who has what he _thinks_ is a sufficient amount of pride but he has a most infuriating ability to _not_ know why he should be demonstrably resentful of people who enjoy lording their qualities over him." Holmes was chuckling as he spoke. "For such a close couple, there is indeed a deep chasm between their understanding."

Watson had great abiding faith in the positive aspects of a loving marriage. "They might come to an agreement someday…"

"…if the Thames flows backwards to the Headwaters, or freezes to the Confluence, or runs clean for ten minutes…" Holmes threw himself backwards to the edge of the bed opposite Watson's, and reached for his cigarettes. He was still smiling.

"I take it then, you have puzzled it out?" Watson could not completely hide the skepticism in his voice.

"Friend Lestrade simply does't bother with stewing over things which he has no control. Inspector Bradstreet has long garnered chuckles at police-approved taverns like the _Elegant Barley_ with the observation that Lestrade files all Very Important and Powerful People under the mental drawer labeled: TOLERANCE. It is amusing because it is true."

It was true that Lestrade's inhuman ability to tolerate a broad variety of personalities fell under a coping mechanism that Dr. Watson felt was unique among Englishmen. It had taken the good doctor an inordinate amount of time to puzzle it out, partly because he was a very stubborn man, and mostly because he didn't want Holmes' help in this particular mystery.

In short (and concluded after years of wandering down the wrong mental paths), Lestrade simply didn't concern himself with what "The Other People" thought. "The Other People" were a very ephemerally defined group, united in that none of them had a thing whatsoever to do with Lestrade's personal values. For example, his former Chief Inspector nursed an irrational hatred to the French, and thus transferred his hate to Lestrade. Lestrade dealt with it by making certain the ulcerous old man would never, ever have cause to demand an early dismissal from his post. Once he removed the possibility of a _deserved_ attack by Miller, Miller was mentally removed from his general concerns.

It was all slightly bizarre, even to the worldly and experienced doctor, but it was the only explanation that made sense. Lestrade treated Miller, and anyone else who could squash him as impersonally as he viewed the common cold: To be avoided, but inevitably must be endured as part of one's natural existence. One endures the cold, but does not waste time with personally resenting it.

It would have been much easier to sort out, Watson had thought ruefully, if only Lestrade himself thought about the way he treated people, because it was clear he didn't. Under normal circumstances, a person who is _that_ ignorant is selfish or near-sighted or arrogant. With Lestrade it was just being too bloody busy to stop and think about it.

"Holmes, the man is too honest to dissemble except when he's playing a rare-as-a-blue-moon practical joke on someone."

"Yes…as admirable as infuriating, and no wonder I have the daily urge to provoke him into some sort of reaction past his phlegmatic reasonings." Holmes lit his tobacco and nearly set the carpet on fire with an injudicious toss to the fireplace from too far away. "I have often wished there was something I could do to prod the Inspector out of his staid lines of behavior, as they hold him back from using what little brains he was gifted with--but the rules our little friend governs himself by are so deep one must don a welldriller's garb to attempt it!"

Watson snorted lightly. "And thus, with this particular bewildering mélange of concepts and behaviors, he married no less than Clea Marie Cheatham, a bona fide martial artiste of society, a skilled dancer among the petty courts, and a foil against whatever puffery came her way."

"Yes…I could almost pity His Lordship…even if I wasn't certain of his complicity in the sudden death of our host." The two traded a long look full of meaning with each other. "Do not concern yourself about Lestrade, Watson. Lestrade is long used to such foolish cruelty."

"I admit I am concerned for him as much as I would be concerned for any friend who is being made a target of sport." Watson admitted.

"Of course you are." Holmes assured him heartily.

"But I am more worried about something else." Watson stared at Holmes, but here the Great Detective's mind momentarily failed him.

Then his brows lifted. "Mrs. Lestrade?"

"Holmes, you've seen a fragment of what that woman is capable of."

"Bah." Holmes made light of it. "I was unprepared."

"That I believe." Watson murmured.

Holmes frowned. "Are you being pawky again, Watson?"

"I am saying merely," Watson smiled wryly, "to be on your guard. Mrs. Lestrade is a force to be encountered, and she is a source of information in parts of London even you would have difficulty plumbing."

"If you are not exaggerating, then we are going to witness quite a show on part of His Lordship."

"His Lordship? What about the Lestrades?"

"The Lestrades are sensible, practical people, Watson. If there are any fire-works, it won't be where the rest of the world can see them."

-

"Geoffrey!" Clea whispered as she fell to the edge of the bed. "The fishing-rods are gone!"

He blinked sleep out of his eyes, or perhaps the fumes off the nearby coffee-urn did it. "Uhn?" He mumbled and tried to focus on his wife. "Who?"

"The fishing rods are gone! His Lordship the Viscount of Spiritual Constipation must have done something with them!" Clea was seething at the realization.

Geoffrey rarely slept deep. It was too hard to pull out of that thick mental cloud into wakefulness. Besides, he always had the impression that he was missing something important when he was deeply asleep.

Clea was only confirming that impression right now.

"Is there a fire?"

"A fire? No! Why would there be a fire? Dear, the fishing-rods are gone!"

"But I don't have fishing rods." He protested.

Clea reached over and framed her husband's face within her two tiny hands. "Geoffrey Brock Lestrade, I know you haven't any fishing rods." She took a deep breath and waited for sentience to return to his foggy eyes. "The rods are gone from the Arbors."

"They have fishing-rods here?"

"Well…yes, I mean, that is to say, normally they do…but right now, no." Clea spoke with great patience. Behind her, the boys were peeping from around the doorway and wondering if they should attempt a distraction of their mother that would spare their father's life. "Geoffrey, I know it's difficult for you to wake up right now, but try to listen."

"Uh?"

It was no use. If she were uncouth enough to bark "Fire!" or "Dynamiters" or, "Murder!" or, "Mr. Holmes just robbed the Bank of England," indeed he would be wide awake so quickly it would hurt him. But she wasn't the sort of person to cry worlf or exaggerate the different levels of disaster about to befall.

Clea sighed, got up, and poured coffee. She handed it _noir_ to her husband. With a patience that would have astonished her family, she waited until half the strong liquid was inside him. When he realized his hair was obscuring his view of his coffee, she felt he was mental enough to speak with.

"The fishing-rods are gone from the Arbor's club

"Fishing-rods?" He swallowed at last.

"Yes. They're gone."

"Stolen?"

"Dear, you're thinking like an Inspector again."

"Won't apologise for that, Clea-Marie-bihan!" He snapped in what she considered "that" tone of voice that said he was about to windmill his way off a verbal cliff.

"Geoffrey…That horrible Viscount took the fishing-rods off the wall downstairs. He did it to keep you from fishing."

"Oh. Well, don't worry, dear."

"Don't worry?"

"I'm going to take the boys fishing with me." He said. "Two boys ought to be a good enough reason for not coming home with a trout, eh?" He blinked blearily over her shoulder. "Feel like a swim today, boys?"

Nicholas brightened like fireworks at Christmas. "Can we, Tad?"

"I don't see why not." Geoffrey yawned and shrugged his shoulders to loosen them up. "I have a bum arm still, the weather's decent, and I did promise them some time to go creek-stomping."

"Martin, do they have regular frogs over here?" Nicholas was asking Martin.

"With regular people, yes. You're just as like to find the only albino frog or some sort of pre-historic ancestor."

Clea stared. "Geoffrey, you're going to ignore the fact that the man is determined to make you look inadequate?"

"Hah. His Lordship? I've been humiliated by experts, Clea. The best in their field. Positively tops." He fell backwards on the pillows with his eyes shut, waiting for the coffee to continue its magic. "Got better things to do than try to play games with that puffed-up git—"

Clea hit him. "No swearing. What about the children?"

"I'm sure they know what a git means—oof."

She hit him again.

"We do, Mother." Martin admitted. "Mrs. Collins uses it when the neighbor's bitch goes into heat."

"She never says it around me." Clea was beginning to get a little bit upset.

"You're a lady." Geoffrey told her.

"Then why does she say it around you?" Clea demanded.

"I'm not much of a lady."

"Nor are we." Nicholas said with rare wit.

"Oh…you…" Clea pinked up and sputtered like a stop-and-start engine. "All three of you get out of my room right this instant! Go do your silly fish-games and leave me to my sewing!"

Despite her relief and seeing how Geoffrey was acting so unconcerned at being a pawn in a rich man's game, she wondered at the tiny gleam in Martin's face as her menfolk struggled to obey.

She wondered what the boy was planning.

She should have been paying more attention to his father. As they both knew about their son's combination of nerve, brains…and flexible morals…he came by it honest.


	25. River Chickens and Oscar Wilde

There was a smile that Lestrade used on rare occasions. It was nothing like the polite training of the upturning of the lips a man in his profession used when dealing with the occasionally unreasonable public, or a smile that actually meant something positive.

This smile had been dubbed by his brother-in-law Myron as "thin as the first dimension viewed sideways." It was an expression that made everyone, even his oversized gargantuan fighting-is-how-we-say-we-love-each-other in-laws take a step backwards when he used it.

He was using it now.

"Right, gentlemen." He put his hands on his hips. "Have you everything?"

Martin held up his pocket-knife.

Nicholas held up a ball of string.

"Excellent. Nick, we need a good fishing-spot. This means none of those silly toy-fishing holes I saw on the way up here."

"Toy fishing-holes?"

Lestrade half-turned to see a mortally outraged Viscount behind him. He was the obvious spokesman for the group; Martin calculated the odds, and decided it was a sure bet that all twelve were willing hangers-on with His Lordship.

"Guess that's where all the poles went to." He whispered to Nick.

"Good job we don't need them."

"Yes." Lestrade said, and began to turn back to his sons.

"I would, if you please, be interested in hearing your reasoning." The wind of Snowdon's north side in February might have been warmer than the Viscount's at that moment. "The Arbors takes pride in owning the finest angling-streams in this part of England."

"Well, I'm sure that's true enough." Lestrade assured him in that completely maddening way one's valet used when deliberately refusing to stoop to criticize his master's choice of dress.

Martin saw Dr. Watson coming up from behind, and waved to him. Watson waved back.

"Hello, Doctor. Going to loosen up your wrists today?"

"I thought of it. Some catch and release would be an excellent way to pass the time today." He spared a pensive glance to the slowly-percolating audience. "I do hope I wasn't interrupting anything."

"Not at all, doctor Watson." The Viscount responded. And it was the hearty way he said that, that tipped the Lestrades that there was, hard as it would seem, one man in the planet who despised John H. Watson.

Nicholas looked at the man in new respect, the way he did when someone just told him the new tiger at the zoological garden had tried to eat one of the guards.

Martin decided he was possibly insane, and not worth pitying. If he was less enthusiastic about the outdoor adventure than his brother, he was completely in the game now. To dislike Dr. Watson was to attack the man who saved the life of his mother and brother, and matters were about to boil. Up to this point, he was trying to plot his revenge against the man who snubbed his father; now he was deciding the Viscount was a threat to society, and he had a moral obligation to do something about it.

"Mr. Lestrade here," Lord Meredith said with a sweep of his arm, "has made an interesting statement about the trout streams on the estate, and I was merely interesting in his reasoning."

"Very well." Was the answer. "You'll notice, boys, that the gentlemen in question are about to indulge in one of England's most famous blood-sports—angling."

"You call it a blood-sport now?" Lord Meredith laughed incredulously, and it rang on the marble.

"I can explain that too, if you like." Lestrade offered in a voice far too patient to be anything but infuriating.

"By all means." Lord Meredith turned to smirk at his audience, and Watson was glad to be out of it.

"The trout is a cold-water fish, and requires a variety of moving waters and a large variety of insects. For all that they can be quite good to eat, I'm afraid most of the trout one catches today in the Angling streams have deteriorated in texture and in flavour. This is due to the fact that angling streams are nothing more than artificially constructed parks for the amusement of the sport, and not out of any practical need to fill an empty plate." He swept his hand to Nick. "Nick, what's the difference between a mountain stream and an official angling stream?"

"The trees are cut at least fifteen feet from the bank in order to make room for the blowing line." Nick pointed out politely. "Of late, anglers have noticed the trout needed the shade of the trees to stay cool, but many open spaces are still in effect. Also a privatized stream is cleared of mud and weeds every year, which causes a severe ecological blow to the riverine community." He shook his head. "If it's a canalized river, the fish in it aren't going to taste like the real thing."

"Martin, what else is done to make angling less of a challenge for the sportsmen?"

"All other species save the trout are slaughtered." Martin said flatly. He was given that question because Nicholas tended to get rather emotional on the topic. "Even water-birds are killed, and game wardens crush baby grebes in the nest."

"Why are they slaughtered?"

"Because the angler sees them as thieves against his catch." Martin responded dryly. "Richard Jefferies in his 1884 Essay on "The Sacrifice to Trout" recited some 14 species of wild animals and fish slaughtered to make fishing less sporting for the sportsman. Species included high-order predators, such as the pike, otter, and heron, but also minor, insignificant species such as the perch, kingfisher, the coot, the grebe, mallard and teal. Mute swans have been killed as well. Anything that is known to even eat trout eggs or fry is aggressively eradicated."

"It's a good thing no one's found a way to kill mosquitoes yet. Nicholas, what's left for the trout to eat in this…barren wasteland?"

"Very little compared to the untouched stream. The trout grow up with less competition, and also with less sharpening of the senses. They are notably less wary in the presence of fewer predators, and Americans have accused England of "farming river chickens." On a bland and uninteresting diet their instincts are dulled and they go almost trustingly to the bait. Such fish are poor in flesh and flavor compared to their wild cousins. Critics of the sport liken it to going on a tiger hunt using old cats with their teeth and claws removed." Nicholas paused to glower. "In the lowlands of England, many species have been eradicated, save populations of "pest" species that, thanks to the humans taking away the competition of their neighbors, are enjoying the pick of the food, nesting sites, and places to hide."

"Martin. Are there more efficient ways of hunting trout?"

"There were at one time, but trout tickling, which is wading in the stream itself and tossing the fish onto the bank for a humane kill is considered ungentlemanly, and unsportsmanlike—in other words, gentlemen are supposed to toy with an edible creature instead of killing it to eat." He paused. "It is also illegal, which forces a fisherman without expensive equipment or the ability to fashion his own rods to be a criminal if he wants to feed his family, and adds to the social stigma of being caught."

"Are there exceptions to the rule of angling as a blood-sport?"

"Absolutely. A catch and release fisherman like Dr. Watson actually benefits the trout stream, for he is teaching the trout how to return to their old hunting instincts." Martin smiled, showing his teeth. He had not yet mastered the "one-dimensional smile" of his father, but his Cheatham uncles knew the day was coming.

Dr. Watson looked relieved. During the children's' recitations, he had been listening with an open expression of horror.

"Why all the fuss to take a fish?"

"Because if you set up the rules of angling, you're supposed to have a challenge to brag about. If they couldn't fight, they wouldn't bother." Nicholas, bless his sweet honest soul, could not keep the bewilderment out of his voice. He was the spiritual inheritor of the child who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes.

"How would you sum up the problem of angling in a privatized stream, Martin?"

"Not unlike fox-hunting." Martin didn't blink. "The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

For his part, Watson noted the almost violent reactions of the sight of a small boy coolly referencing the notorious Oscar Wilde. It was delightful.

On instinct he slipped his gaze to the side. As he'd suspected, Sherlock Holmes was hiding behind a large marble statue of Apollo, doing his best not to die of asphyxiation before the lecture was finished.

"Thank you. In closing, Nicholas, would you mind answering the last question: Is there a significant difference between anglers and a gladiator getting ready to spike a slave at the Coliseum with a trident?"

"Yes." Nicholas said thoughtfully. "I think so, sir. Just one."

"And that would be..?"

"Fish can't scream."

Geoffrey patted his son on the head. He'd known Nick would pull through for him. The boy had a gift for innocently illuminating the ugliest of truths. "So, Nick. Are there any decent places to fish here?"

"Possibly. There's a small pool on the map, and it's only half an hour through the brush. We'll have to be careful, though. Above it used to be a clearing before they dynamited a hill for the road, and a boulder rolled down and blocked the only easy point of access, so there's probably a lot of brambles and snakes."

"Sounds perfect. What's the rabies count for this year?"

"Very low. Mostly in the foxes."

"Ready, then?"

Watson quickly and discreetly nipped to the back of the statue and tried to glare Holmes into calming down, even though he knew it was impossible. Holmes was a perilous colour as the dazed and shaken group around Meredith attempted to gather up their equipment and their dignity for what appeared to be the glummest of fishing adventures.

"Holmes, for heaven's sake, try to breathe."

"One doesn't often see a group of gentlemen going to a trout's funeral as if they were headed to their own." Holmes said after they were safely alone and he could laugh it out. "I wish Baynes had been here."

"Please, don't." Watson shuddered. "Is he still with the Lady Woodrow?"

"For all it is worth…" Holmes sniffed. "The man is too stubborn for his own good. She will not confide in him, though I am certain the two will agree to be enemies before luncheon."

Watson sighed. "Speaking of luncheon, I must go and rejoin my companions."

"There is nothing companionable about that man's social group. You'd be best off with Lestrade--briars, brush, snakes, rabid foxes and all."

"I am aware of that." Watson scowled, "But you did tell me to keep an eye on Lord Meredith."

"It ought to be fruitful." Holmes observed. "Lestrade managed to stir up the coals with that one. He'll be spending the next six hours over-pretending to be normal." He sighed. "Leave out nothing in your account to me tonight, my dear fellow. Every sneer upon you, every gibe, every poignant comment."

"I shall be as truthful as the newspaper of your fantasies." Watson vowed.

Holmes watched him go, smiling ruefully the whole time. Watson thought he wanted a verbatim accounting because of the case.

In truth, Holmes felt it was Lord Meredith's behavior more than his comments that would be revealing.

He just wanted to know for himself how badly he would treat Watson.

The accounting would come later, at the close of the case.


	26. Lead the Way

"Oh, this is gorgeous!"

Ulla Redfern brightened down to her freckles at the reaction of her guest against the china. As opposed to the white china with blue paint, it was blue with white slip. "It's local," she explained. "There's a small clay pit a few miles east, and the men have been digging it out since Stone Age times."

"Lovely." Clea gushed further. "Do they sell well?"

"Well enough, but merchandising can always improve, eh?" Ulla glanced up. Through the parsimonious glass window of the kitchen they could see a trodding mass of men in various preparations of fishing. "Strange." She mused. "Usually they go out singing something about Eton."

"Maybe they're worried about the weather." Clea offered. "Fishermen are a strange lot; wade in water but can't stand to get rained on."

"Does defeat the purpose, doesn't it." Ulla laughed. "And they try to stay dry even though they're going after a creature that is the opposite!"

Clea was glad to enjoy Ulla Redfern's company. The woman had a sympathetic vibration to her that ensured an understanding on a deeper plane. She was glad her girl Viola had found service with the woman, and said so.

"I went above the Missus on that one, truth to tell." Ulla confessed. "T'ld appear that your Inspector is not the Ladyship's favourite person in the world. She was all set to hire her until she saw the Lestrade name, but I assured her it wasn't the only name attached to the 'Rose." She lifted her cup in salute. "If they're going to hire someone to run the kitchens, then they need to trust who they hire."

"I quite agree. I don't think Geoffrey has anything against your employer, Ulla. He did seem a little worried when he found out the Woodrows own the property." Her husband wanting to turn around and go back on the spot to Dorking had been a bit of an extreme reaction. Then again, Cheathams had an instinctive reaction to trouble that Lestrades did not: At the first sign of trouble, they both ran for it, but while the Lestrades were oriented to put a stop to said trouble, Cheathams more often than not helped it on.

Ulla sighed. "They're a funny lot." She said at last. "My mother used to say, too much money does something to the brain. I used to laugh at her, but you'll note I'm not laughing right now!" She passed a blue plate of seedcake to her guest. "They wanted their ownership of the Arbours to be a big secret from everyone, I suppose because a gentleman isn't supposed to make money…but we all knew better." She sipped her tea slowly. "T'was never a happy marriage, but it had gotten worse in the past few years. Lady Woodrow was made to give up her dogs, and that wasn't something she accepted well."

"Why?" Clea was taken aback.

"No one knows, except that His Lordship wanted to punish her for something. He could be a hard man, Mrs. Lestrade. I almost pity that lot, I do. They can't just up and divorce if it's in the best interest of all…they've both got too much tied up in their families so they stick together and rot from the inside." Despite the topic, she was able to enjoy her tea well enough.

"They sound like an absorbing lot." Clea noted carefully.

"More like self-absorbed if you ask me." Ulla answered prettily. "The Woodrows have always been a bit different…they were given the title for engineering work; after the Great Fire of London, the ancestor, a George Tomson did such a wonderful job with drafting the architecture for the new rows of houses along the river, they were dubbed "Woodrow" for the rows of wooden houses.. Given a title for good services to the non-Royalty means you'll never completely fit in, but they were smart enough to not try too hard. The family's always been a little bit mysterious, and they have powerful friends and neighbors who I'm sure imagine they're more clever and resourceful than they really were."

"It's an interesting history you paint." Clea grinned openly. "I always say if you want to know what's going on, ask the cooks."

"Why, thank you." Ulla bent to her neck with a smile. "I'm glad to return the compliment. Going back to my original point, Mrs. Woodrow was not happy about Viola but now she has no reservations at all. And I'm glad that your husband seeks no offense. She's not a happy woman, and you know how that turns a woman bitter from the inside out."

"I know it too well." What woman didn't have a hundred examples to think of? "Does she have any friends?"

"Friends?" Ulla swallowed tea and gave the question serious thought. "Not like you and I have friends. She has allies morelike. It's a strong'un who could get past the late husband. Lord Meredith was one such ally…he knew her family from years back; they were long-term business partners in timbering, all the way back to their grandfather's time."

Clea caught on. "You're saying that the Viscount was someone too powerful for Sir George to bar from his door."

"Oh, yes. Money talks, doesn't it?"

"It does indeed. Sometimes it even screams…"

The day slipped by pleasantly. Clea took a long walk around the estate on the crushed pebble and shell paths, admiring the neatness of the attempts to tame nature, and wondering how many people were employed just for the sake of the grass. Again there were few people out; possibly sleeping a beautiful day away. Well, it was their choice and she made her own on the matter.

She re-joined Ulla for a light luncheon on the side of the patio against the tradesman's entrance by the kitchen just before the first of the fishing-teams filed in.

"Goodness me," Ulla mused. "Normally they come back with more fish than that…I suppose the luck was against them."

"It happens." Clea was relieved. Less fish from the opposition meant less demands on her family. "For all your plans, you can't plan for a fish."

"I don't see your husband yet." Ulla peered. "I wonder if they're still fishing."

"As there is still daylight, I can only imagine so…"

Clea didn't pester her husband's need to commune with the members of the fish species. Early on in their marriage, he had caught on that the pursuit of a finny creature was something his overbearing in-laws weren't interested enough to "help" him with (the marine interests of Cutler, Wallace, and Andrew were all tied up in how dashing they looked in sea-wear and their polished boats).

Hunting meant he unfortunately had to show he was the better shot than most of his in-laws, riding was something he preferred to avoid unless he was alone, and he thought of Myron's racing pigeons as "speed meals." Fishing

Dogged determination might not be the best reason for Geoffrey's developed hobby, but it was Geoffrey all over.

She ate a pleasant lunch without having to correct someone's manners, posture, handling of the napkin, or converse in a double-language to keep younger ears from catching on to the actual meaning. It was almost luxurious, but she wouldn't have minded talking with another person just for the change.

Mr. Baynes must have some of that showman's trick of mental technique. He appeared over her horizon like a fullmasted sail, and doffed his hat with the smooth manipulation of a heavily-oiled machine.

"Good-afternoon, Mrs. Lestrade. Have your menfolk abandoned you?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Baynes. I gave them the road map and sent them off myself." Inspector Baynes' whiskers were more walrus-like than ever—she needed to mention them to Cutler at the first opportunity the next time he went on about how dignified they were. _Cut that off right at the neck…_

Clea poured tea, playing host.

"Thank you, Mrs. Lestrade." Nothing less than perfect in his manners, but Clea was more comfortable with the earnest awkwardness of small boys. "I hope this isn't detracting from your enjoyment of your holiday."

"Far from it, Inspector. We'd missed our usual holiday with the family and while it can't compare, I'm sure, it is still good to be out of London on occasion."

"I enjoy it myself." He confessed unsurprisingly. "I grew up in the Old Smokie myself…my family moved to greener pastures but I've never felt at home so much as when I was in the city."

"Surely with your successful case you can look forward to promotion." She passed the plate of bread.

"One would think, Mrs. Lestrade." His voice grew oddly soft at that moment, nothing like the chuckling complacency his face was suited for. She wondered if that too, was a projected image he was expected to give. "Shall we see the Lestrades tonight at the dance?"

Clea wondered why that particular question was poised to her, but she saw no need to lie. "Unless something else happens, sir."

Geoffrey came back with a blissful expression hiding behind his stern gleam of parental pride. The boys were practically turning cartwheels and chattering in a mixture of languages that would have been the horror of any one linguist.

"Oh, goodness." Their father stopped to close his eyes and cover them with his hands. "Boys…no mixing the tongues. We haven't stooped to patios just yet."

Clea swept down the steps with a smile. "Any luck, gentlemen?" She beamed.

"Quite good. I had a pang returning a few brutes back to the water." He grinned at her. "After a while, I just gave up, and sat on the bank with a pipe. Nicholas did the catching, and Martin, of course, did the printing." He stopped and pulled out a long roll of cloth from his travelling bag. "You said you preferred blue?"

"Well it was just my preference, dear. I don't know what he'll prefer…"

"Hello, Lestrade." Watson was stepping stiffly down the steps. A tiny look of anxiety still frowned in his face, but his manners were as strong as ever. "Did you have any luck?"

"Plenty, actually." Geoffrey grinned. "Didn't keep 'em though, just their memories." He discreetly pressed several cylinders off to Clea, who was beaming from ear to ear. "Thank you, dear."

"Not at all, thank you. Shall we prepare for supper in our rooms and the dancing downstairs?"

Supper was sumptuous. Clea admired the eye to colour: the vegetable dishes were masterful with a soup of white tomatoes garnished with leeks and dill-flowers; tiny steamed turnips rubbed against yellow radishes and pale pink carrots dressed with black-cherry vinaigrette.

Geoffrey was cynical of any food his wife hadn't been in charge of. It was one of his more endearing flaws.

After a wash-off, the boys managed to stay awake long enough to gulp down their food and collapse into the shared bed.

"What did you do, make them run laps?"

"No, they decided to go swimming." Geoffrey calmly chewed on a turnip. "If there was a single germ left alive in Nick, I daresay he froze it out today. You wouldn't believe those two. They went after those trout like professionals. Had them on the bank before I could say boo to either."

"They're willing to go out on a limb for Dr. Watson."

"Well as they should. That's the most long-suffering man in London if not the whole isle."

"You make him sound like St. Francis of Assisi."

"Not hardly. I don't think Dr. Watson's the sort to go hungry if there was a plump rabbit gamboling about his feet…"

They finished their part of the meal in peaceful silence. Clea knew of Surrey as "rich"—be the word applying to forestland, Roman history, water, or vacationing businessmen. It was one particular businessman preying on her husbna'ds mind and she asked him about it.

"It's quiet compared to London," he said at last. "But I've never really cared for Surrey. Baynes likes to say it: "We stagnate in the provinces." He twisted at a tiny thread at his cuff. "It's funny when you think about it…The Chief would relish the chance to retire me to a place like this and Bayne would give much to be put in London."

"I can't see you in the country all the time, dear." Clea pressed her cheek against his. "Not for long."

"Not now." He replied strangely.

"How so?"

"I might have been grateful for any post…but I went to London and that's where I chose to start. I've put my life into London since the beginning."

"And there shall you stay?" Clea smiled into his ear. "You do know Roger still hopes for your retirement up north with him."

"I've never known how serious he is about that…" Geoffrey laughed. "What an image! Surrounded by Bradstreets and Roanes!"

"What about retiring to the West with the Cheathams?"

"Heavens. England would crack asunder!"

"Or south?" She teased. "Watch the moonfleet and see how your family is?"

"I don't want to know!" He exclaimed. "No, seriously, Clea…" He half-laughed as if to himself. "The less I stay out of the family's business, the better for all of us." He rose to see to the flickering coals. In the unsteady illumination, the night-garden threw strange laceworks and shadows upon shadows. He returned to her side and they sipped the last of the wine companionably.

"Smugglers make their own ways, on their own terms. Almost like a government…but I can't live that way."

Her husband needed rules. Growing up in the worst aspects of a floating world, he had not been protected from its hardships.

An hour later, Clea had something else to think about.

"I beg your pardon, sir…madam…"

The old servant acted as though it were an ordinary thing to address their sort with deference. Against the dizzying blur of dancing, he was still as an anchor. "But your presence would be appreciated at your nearest convenience in the North Room."

Geoffrey looked at Clea. "Very well," he agreed, curious as his wife. "But I don't see a North Room here."

"It is the name for an older structure built before this one in the fifteenth century."

"I see…" Geoffrey used his live-and-let-learn voice. "Lead the way, if you don't mind…"


	27. Interesting

Clea had a problem with her mind—it never shut up.

The North Room was not overly masculine..but it was suited to a man's tastes in its forest-green hues and oils of hunt-scenes. Only the red jackets on the painted fox-hunters and the red on a hanging tapestry showed vibrancy. A woman's touch made an afterthought in the form of a magnificent urn of foamy white and cream flowers in the centre of the table.

Clea of course, saw Mr. Holmes first—the man was a buoy in the heart of the sea. He had just thrown himself into a Roman-style lounging sofa and was in the process of accepting a cigar from Dr. Watson. Behind him he was ignoring the ugliest portrait of a man she had ever seen—all bristled beard and eyebrow and almost flat golden eyes perched over a nose made for snubbing and an underbite like a bulldog.

She thought both men looked a little tired…and restrained. The way her brothers did when they knew what they should be doing, but were unable.

The three other men…

One was a powerful, well-built figure with a slow-receding hairline of silver; he was smoking away with his cigar. Clea was accustomed to powerful forces, so she made note of his.

The other two men were "of a set" as her brothers were in the way of business. These looked to be brothers in banking. Myron often said, "numbers exuded their own odour" and for the first time, she fathomed his complaint. Their suits were finely cut with little proof of being used.

"Ah, the Lestrades," Mr. Holmes exclaimed with a show of the energy and activism she was accustomed to. "Do have a seat. There are excellent cigarillos, Inspector. Mrs. Lestrade, we have it on good authority the cordials are top-rate."

Clea sensed without evidence Mr. Holmes was quoting someone else in the matter. Someone he did not care for. Her eyes flicked to the silver-haired man for a moment.

"I shall bear that in mind, Mr. Holmes." Clea had been good all day. "But the Skye Whisky looks even better."

She felt the smile emanating from Geoffrey as he mixed a drink to her preferences.

"As you like it."

They took a short-length settee together, Clea mindful of her skirts. One of the "brothers' was freshening his drink with syrup.

"Inspector Lestrade, have you yet met with your Surrey colleague, Inspector Baynes?"

He was taking a step forward from the corner; Clea's weaker eyes had missed him at first. _Getting shabby, Clea Marie!_ She was accustomed to most of the ways of men (even if they refused to make any sense), but it would always annoy her at how the men had to size each other up at a glance. _Rather like the buyer regarding horseflesh. The tracks, the butcher's, the scrap-factory, or the offal?_

"Mr. Baynes can no doubt describe the purpose of this meeting better than I." Mr. Holmes was saying.

Baynes made a low sound. "Very well. This isn't a social gathering—pleasant as the company may be. We've had an unfortunate death on part of a distinguished guest, and that of a very valuable box of jewels."

Geoffrey frowned but held his tongue.

Unfortunately, he was noticed. "Do you have a question, Mr. Lestrade?" Silver Hair asked.

"I wasn't aware Sir George was a guest." Lestrade answered slowly. "I thought he was the owner of the Arbours."

Geoffrey's observation did not go over very well. The three men reacted in unfortunate manners, all of them looking at them as if Geoffrey (and she to a lesser extent) had abruptly sprouted buboes.

"How did you come across this information?" One of the twin bankers asked a little sharply.

"We thought that was common knowledge, sir." Clea answered for him coolly. Geoffrey was constrained by his work even when on vacation.

"And that he had died of a heart attack—natural causes." Geoffrey neatly distracted the attention off his wife.

"A heart attack brought about by a dissolute life, it was said." Dr. Watson spoke softly, with a trace of regret at the waste.

"What of his widow?" Clea wondered. "Lady Woodrow can hardly be seen in public now."

"I fear she may know something of the missing jewels." The other banker twin spoke for the first time. "For this we were hoping for your assistance, Mrs. Lestrade."

Clea and Geoffrey traded a look with each other, no more than a second, but laden with understanding.

"Lady Woodrow may not be willing to warm to anyone, much less someone with my name." He spoke, taking her silence cue. He cleared his throat. "It's been a few years, I'll grant you, but she had a most defensive demeanor when I first met her."

Clea was interested, but kept her mouth shut.

"Were there…professional…circumstances to this meeting, Mr. Lestrade?" Baynes asked.

_He already knows_, Clea realized. _But he won't say. This must be titillating_.

"One of her dogs was stolen for ransom." Geoffrey said slowly. He pulled on his cigar—a clue to his wife that he was sorting through details and ignoring the breathless audience. "The case was closed after the dog was found dead."

"A shame." Baynes said perfunctorily. "We haven't pet stealing quite so much over here."

"Count your blessings is all I can say."

Clea wondered how many more insults would be traded before the evening was out.

"Any information might be useful."

"Some details of the case are private." Geoffrey snapped. "I can tell you that if the lady feels threatened in any way, she will back herself into a corner, and she will hold fast." He tapped ash into the tray. "If she warms to my wife, it won't be from her experience in the past. She loathes me in the extreme."

"Would she warm to Mrs. Lestrade if she believed she too was in an unhappy marriage?"

Clea didn't respond at fist; she was too busy noticing how the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees.

"Not acceptable." She snapped. It was all she could to not to rise and put the tray over someone's thick head. "Gossip travels faster than man, and the malicious sort fastest of all. Our children needn't face a lie."

There, that was calm enough. She still wanted to flip that stuffed prig into the wall and tap his head on the bricks until the blood flowed.

The notion of what her father would do in such a situation did much to calm her instincts.

"Clea has worked with me in the past as a policeman's wife." Geoffrey continued speaking quietly, but he was too quiet. "No deception was ever required."

"These stolen pieces of jewelry." Clea said softly. "I've helped guard women before, but you suspect Lady Woodrow of the theft?"

Pained expressions met her all around. "It isn't precisely her jewelry."

"It is or it isn't." Clea was starting to lose patience.

"They were part of her wedding assembly, on the understanding that it would be passed down to the first child."

"And there is no child."

"No." Dr. Watson said delicately.

Clea mused that over. There were many reasons why a couple would be childless…and she suspected murky reasons here. It was how the men wanted to dance about the subject.

"To whom do the jewels revert?" She wondered. "The closest heir? The original estate? Executors?"

"That would be confidential information, Mrs. Lestrade." Banker Brother #1 replied quietly.

Geoffrey wordlessly tapped the last of his ash into the tray. He sat quietly for a bit longer, letting the silence lengthen in the room.

"For starters," he said at last, "I'm not one to tell my wife what she should or should not do. If she thinks it is the correct thing to do, she will do it and she needn't my permission for it.

"Secondly," he added, and Clea thought, _here it comes_, for she knew before they did that he was lifting his gaze and skewering the three strange men, "I'm enough of a policeman to not be the least bit comfortable with this overweening lack of information. I can understand you want to protect the interests of your clients, and it would appear a death has been made under suspicious circumstances." He rested his hand at his little gold ring, twisting it without looking. "But complete lack of information means a lack of trust, and that I cannot accept. I hope that you understand my feelings on this matter…and if she chooses to help you in the matter, she will be leery of you as much as she is of Lady Woodrow."

The effect was electric. Three faces turned purple, but only one was capable of speech.

"Are you saying, sir, that you find us untrustworthy?"

"Not at all. I am saying that if you trust my wife so little, then it would be only natural that she return the favour."

"I was under the impression," Silver Hair cleared a phlegm-ridden throat, "that you frequently operate with Mr. Holmes under little or no information."

"Mr. Holmes has worked with the Yard since 1879." Geoffrey spoke without rancor, not even anger, but Clea sensed its threat beneath the surface. "He was willing to spend that time in building up a position of trust between himself and the police. Mr. Holmes has not in this time knowingly or willingly put another person's life on the line in the pursuit of a case."

Clea caught the tiniest flicker of a flinch in Mr. Holmes' countenance, but it was gone as quickly as it happened.

"I might also add," Geoffrey answered in an even quieter voice, "that the lack of information prevents either of us from coming to our own conclusions in this matter."

"You're really angry," Clea said in wonder.

He paused to dance her into a circle before replying. "Yes." He admitted.

"I haven't seen you this angry in…well…a long time."

He nodded his agreement, and they concentrated on the dance in mutual silence.

Both Lestrades were thinking through the spin and flair and bustle of the movements. Clea had a fair notion of what was going through her husband's head at the moment.

He was too professional to let out his personal feelings in the line of duty (a Beefeater could take lessons from his almost mindless stoicism). But this wasn't a professional line. They were on a much-needed holiday. Nicholas had been gravely ill for weeks and Geoffrey's arm was still a length from being back to normal.

"I can't imagine," he said at last. "They were willing to suggest we pretend our marriage is on the outs in order to slither into the already abused trust of Lady Woodrow."

"It didn't sit well by me either, dear." Clea admitted. "But we have plenty of our holiday left."

Geoffrey nodded again, but his face was cloudy.

"Don't bottle it up, sweet." Clea pressed her gloved hand on his shoulder. "I'll be forced to come to my own disastrous conclusions."

"Heaven forbid." He half-smiled. It was a vast improvement. "Still…I'm getting a strange feeling about all this."

"I would imagine so."

"I think I'm getting soft in the head." He said ruefully. "I don't know nearly enough about the case, but I swear I'm beginning to feel sorry for Lady Woodrow."

"I thought you didn't like her."

"I don't. I don't like her at all. And she hates **me** with every pore of her being. She'd probably run me down with a train if she saw me standing on the tracks."

"Would you feel better if you talked about it?"

He looked torn.

"I can always have a dance with you in the garden, Geoffrey. Now that Nick has a flute back he can serenade us."

The old smile was back. "Have you thought about taking a walk down the night-path?" He asked. "Old Joe recommended it."

"Sounds delightful, Inspector. What is a night-path?"

"Some sort of moon garden."

"Lead the way, sir."

She pulled her shawl back on in concession to the damp and he held the door open. Outside the air made the indoors feel stuffy and close-set. They breathed easier once they were alone, and the little groom pointed to the appropriate path, lined with small clumps of Ice Plant and ivory white blossoms. Further down the path and away from the sounds of the dancing and music that still leaked through the cracks of the Arbours, a blessed silence ruled. A more natural music made of insects and small frogs arose from unseen ponds.

This path was all shell instead of partial; it glowed, catching the slightest illumination. Small candles gleamed in frostwork lamps, half-guttered from the late hour. Slim stalks of mignonette and ornamental white nicotinia reflected the weak moonlight.

"This must be quite a place when the moon is full." Clea noted. The path took them to a raked circle with white-painted wooden benches. "Are we ready?"

He took a deep breath. "Lady Woodrow was not treated well by her husband." He said bluntly. "It was sheer accident when it was let slip, but I was there to see it, and she'll never forgive me."

"That explains why she didn't want Ulla to hire a girl from my kitchen." Clea admitted. This was before our marriage, you said."

"After the bans, before Leap Year." Geoffrey agreed. "Knowing a little more on the subject today, I'm wondering a few more things…" He toyed with his ring again, this time staring at it. "She invested a great deal of effort into taking care of her dog for the shows…so much so that I wonder if that was the only friend the woman had."

"You think something else now?"

"I wonder something. I haven't a shred of evidence for it." He was turning inward, thoughtful and quiet. "Sir George had her give up her dogs."

"That sounds cruel, if she loved them so much."

"I don't even know if it was love…well…not in the way you or I would understand…I think she needed those dogs. They might have been an excuse to keep away from him when he was in one of his moods."

"How frightening."

"She'd had three dogs, including the one who died. Enough years have passed that the last one would be dead of old age or disabled. Large dogs don't often live for long. What if he simply ordered her not to renew her bloodlines? That would have been a cruel thing to do."

"The question would be, was he cruel enough to do such a thing."

Geoffrey was silent again, and Clea could see him walking through his memory, the conversations had with the mysterious woman, the rooms, her furniture. His eyes flicked from side to side as, within his mind, he studied portraits on the walls, the paper, the carpets.

"I think he was." He said at last. "I can't prove it, but I think he would be that cruel. I see it every week at work. A man blames his wife for no heirs…he might very well be the flaw, but his pride won't permit him to face it. So he finds ways to punish the other person."

"You've thought of something." She noted.

"It may be nothing."

"And it may not be. See if it makes sense to this woman."

"You make more sense than most _men_, Clea."

"Why, thank you." She pressed his hand and waited.

"Her estate at London." He said at last. "It was supposed to be her house. But it was decorated for a man's taste. I couldn't pin it down the first time I was in there…but while we were sitting there in the North Room, I realized the colours were the same as they had been in the London Estate."

"Sir George favoured the North Room?"

"It was his damned-huge portrait on the wall above Mr. Holmes." Geoffrey swore. "That house, Clea…every inch of that house she lived in was made to his design. Now if you don't like someone…how cruel can that be?"

Clea shuddered. "Very cruel." She agreed quietly. "And yet the law is not on her side if she is responsible for the missing jewels."

"They're not telling us everything." He reminded her. "They didn't come out and say who the bestowals were. That's suspicious to me." He rubbed at his chin, at a loss for further information. "There's something up. Mr. Holmes knows it. He's not being half as annoying as he usually is. That means he's already figured it out."

"You mean to say," Clea couldn't stop the little laugh rising in her throat, "That you can judge Mr. Holmes by how annoying he is?"

"When he stops talking, it's a bad sign." Geoffrey was slowly smiling. "It means he's stopped figuring things out…and now he's waiting."

Clea thought of something. "Is Mr. Holmes loyal to his clients?"

"Heavens, no. He's a self-appointed Judge and jury."

"Geoffrey…?"

"Yes?"

"Things just got interesting, didn't they?"


	28. Recognition

Once in a great while—a very great while—Geoffrey Lestrade managed to pull one over on his wife. Needless to say, this took a great deal of planning on his part, or more tpically, the type of seamless luck that occurs when all the planets are found to be quite accidentally in proper alignment.

In this case, it was dancing her to a level of exhaustion and waking up in the morning to find he had actually beaten her to the dawn chorus.

Such moments weren't witnessed every day…

Geoffrey managed to slip out of the covers and dress himself without falling over Nick's shoes (bless him, the boy wasn't quite as neat as Martin), and rang for the maid. When she emerged he left instructions for their breakfast and went downstairs for his own.

Clea never complained, but it wasn't easy enjoying an English breakfast with a husband who displayed nausea at the sign of anything sweet. She liked her cane syrups, sweet butter, jellies, jams, treacle, and three different kinds of ground sugar as well as the next woman. So did Nick. They deserved the freedom of a scrooge-free breakfast once in a while…

-

Downstairs he was taken aback at how deserted the place was. He looked about, even behind him, but it was still just himself and one lonely little maid puttering around in the back, wiping up a spill off a vase of fresh flowers.

_They really don't pay people enough to work in a place like this, _Geoffrey thought to himself_. Learning a useful trade, my badge. Anyone can mop water for the toffs…_

She was already rising, her face pinking all the way to her ears and hands fluttering at her apron-clad sides. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Lestrade. May I help you?"

Knowing who he was and that he preferred to be "Mr." when on vacation said as clearly as a gunshot that his wife had gone through the staff before him. He nodded at her, wishing that people didn't look at him with such fear and suspicion. It was all part of being a policeman, but he didn't like it.

"I was wondering when breakfast would be up, Miss."

"We have most of it now, sir. Most of the guests aren't up for another hour or two."

Geoffrey wondered how anyone could possibly sleep so late. It had to be going on seven in the morning. Most everyone had gone to bed by midnight!

"Eggs if you have any." No one had yet found a way to put sugar on an egg that _he_ knew of.

-

No newspapers in _this_ place. In complete resignation and in his restlessness he plucked a book off the shelf in the breakfast room and paged through a puzzling private publishing venture on the wonders, glories, and majesties of Surrey.

_Whoever this person is, they'd get rich writing for _Punch_ under satire…_

Just as he was distracted by the arrival of the tray, Inspector Baynes emerged.

The man looked quite tired. Lestrade had to feel professional sympathy for him; he was doing all the policework and most of the leg-work…but he had a feeling that despite the seeming alliance between himself and Mr. Holmes, the two divas were performing on separate sides of the stage.

Under such circumstances, Lestrade's sympathy could only go so far.

"Just in time for some breakfast, Mr. Baynes." Lestrade put the book aside with politely disguised relief (he could care less about murders and scandals that happened back when Breton was the only one of two languages running around the southern part of the isle).

"I shouldn't say no to that offer, Lestrade." Baynes admitted. "I'll need every bite I pack in if I'm to keep up with Mr. Holmes today."

"Completely understood." As usual, the meal was grossly over-proportioned. He signaled for another place at the table.

"I hope last night didn't cause any difficulties." Baynes opened the floor.

"I can't say it did." Geoffrey divided up enough eggs to feed a family off Lambeth between them. "We're here for recuperation more than a vacation, as you're aware."

"Still, it looked a little odd, you must admit. Mr. Holmes inviting you over just before the murder."

In polite society, a gentleman does not hold his cup with both hands. He holds the handle by one, and the other holds the tiny, fragile, idiotically slender cup-saucer beneath it. At Baynes' statement, Geoffrey temporarily forgot just how fragile china could be, but this was a set off the local clay, not something imported from across the globe for an ignominious end under a policeman's calloused grip.

They were the only members in the Breakfast-room, but abruptly, the room seemed to get a bit crowded.

_So. He had arranged this. Thought so._ Geoffrey took a sip of unsweetened twig tea and put the cup back down with exaggerated care. Without saying a word he set the whole thing down on the table by his plate and waited a moment, collecting his thoughts.

"You'll have to ask Mr. Holmes for his reasons on arranging this vacation," he said at last. "But while he's an infuriating man, I can tell you it is completely against his character to do something as intolerable as inviting a man's family to a resort just so the head of that family can help investigate a murder." _Amazing what you can learn if you actually have the guts to ask the man something...sometimes he actually even tells you something._

Baynes looked skeptical—and hopeful. He wanted to be convinced, Geoffrey realised. "You've worked with him a great deal." He pointed out. "You ought to know him as well as anyone."

"I _don't_ know him as well as anyone." Geoffrey said it far more sharply than he meant, but he wouldn't apologize for his feelings. "I barely know the man at all. Dr. Watson has his measure, not I." He waved the fork between them like a lever to underscore his point. "He can solve cases. But he can't just up and solve cases without the help of the Yard. And he will always need us for the times when we're in a country-wide manhunt or a blank arrest warrant absolutely must be written out."

Baynes split a too-crisp piece of toast in his large hands. "He's a smart one, but there's enough he does that isn't approved procedure."

Talking about someone when they weren't there frankly scared Geoffrey. It called for a degree of brazen confidence he didn't carry. He hoped devoutly that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

"Still, the rewards aren't half bad." Baynes was saying. "You've solved quite a lot of them with his help."

"Just as he's finished his share with mine." Geoffrey concentrated on getting a too-runny yolk to his fork. "It's worth the occasional inconvenience, just like it is with any partnership."

Baynes mused him over. There was no other word for it in Geoffrey's admittedly just-adequate vocabulary. "So," he said slowly. "You really don't care what others think of you?"

"Of course I care!" he protested with an assuring warmth to his voice. "Everyone ought to care…but it's a luxury in this profession." He sighed and put his fork down before he could swing yolk across the table. "My old supervisor once told me, a man learns more from losing chess than he does winning. Whether or not he was giving me indirect advice, I'll never know…but it's stuck with me ever since." His mouth made a peculiar twist, one Clea would have recognized on his father the one time she'd seen him. "It isn't an easy rope to walk on," he confessed. "I stand up for myself as a grown man ought…but when it comes to politics…there's just too many pitfalls and traps and Mr. Holmes fears nothing, Baynes. He grew up in a world where men make their own way by commanding others."

Baynes said nothing, but he appeared to be listening with both ears.

"The police might not be thought much of, but we're the only yardstick of behavior out there. Legally we can arrest anyone regardless of their station, but we're still battling out the older way of doing things where things were handled by people within your own station or higher-up. I get tired of the cover-ups and the attempts "not to make waves" and all the other ways people get in the way of the law. So many of them think they even obey the law, but they don't, really. They're at odds with the other laws they were raised up with: Be respectable, don't do anything shameful, set a good example, and never fail. Recipe for disaster, that." He took a deep breath. "And I don't envy you, because you're not being given the truth in the matter. Every single one of those jesters wants to hoarde everything they know from you."

Baynes sighed. "I knew that would happen when I was called in." He pointed out. "They think we're all out to find something else and root up all the skeletons while we're there, instead of just sticking to the case."

"I don't envy you."

"Perhaps you could share some of the credit on this case." Baynes commented as if casually. Geoffrey didn't for once think it was an idle thought that just popped into that large head.

"I'm flattered but I hardly have the connexions that would be of any use."

"Didn't you have dinner with His Lordship?" Baynes asked in an odd tone of voice.

"It would be more truthful to say I was already having dinner." Geoffrey answered with a voice so even it would stand as a spirit-level. "Mr. Holmes toled him over. You know how he can be."

"Yes." Baynes mused. "But why did he feel the urge to invite him over?"

Geoffrey sighed. "I don't know and I really don't care." He answered. "I'm here on vacation, and it's the first vacation I've ever had that didn't involve looking at the walls of a hospital." He sighed again, and lifted his hands in the thin scraps of rising sunlight. "I have no wish to interfere with your case. In fact, had I known there would be a mysterious death here, I would have regretfully cancelled this vacation and gone somewhere less stressful."

Baynes made a chuckling sound. "Well, I suppose I must earn my promotion all the way."

"You'll be promoted." Lestrade told him evenly. "I'm sure of it. You have what it takes."

Baynes chuckled again. "High praise from you, Inspector." He swirled his tea.

"I suppose." Lestrade answered diffidently.

"Lestrade, you'd work with me _if_ you had a professional reason. I know it. But you've got a personal score against me and I'd like to know what it is."

"You arrested the wrong man, _deliberately_." Lestrade heard himself saying before he could stop himself. "A terrified man who could barely understand English. It should have been _your_ thumb what was nearly bit off! I've arrested plenty of people by accident, but I've never done anything like that."

"Finding the true murderers…who had murdered plenty of people in the past, wasn't enough of a reason for you, sir?" Baynes' tone of voice was pleasant but there was a single strand of cheerful condescension in it that made Geoffrey think about leaping across the table and wrapping his hands about that muscular throat. He gave himself less than ten seconds before Baynes cracked his skull open with the truncheon hanging off his coat.

He counted to eleven.

"It wasn't." He said at last. "It was not. You abused the trust in the police with your actions, you created fear where it hadn't existed, and you made no apologies—oh, I don't know why I'm even bothering talking to you about it!" Geoffrey's smaller form was pressed into the air facing Baynes, and Baynes was making no move against him. "I've been on the force twenty years longer than you, Baynes. Don't ask me to overlook the world I grew up in. You really want to transfer to London? Are you willing to face the fact that one out of every four of your comrades are going to seek a hospital from our own public attacking us? The number of criminals with firearms is on the rise while we have to beg for the temporary permission to keep an iron for the night in the worst parts of London. Do you have any illusions about how high the suicide rate is now? Can you work, one man, for every few hundred to few thousand citizens depending on the case? You have your ambitions and you have a right to pursue them, Baynes. To be honest you _don't_ belong here. You need to be where the big problems are, but your generation takes some things for granted. I'm worried that an abuse of authority, even for a good cause, will reverse the trust we're only just starting to hold with our own people."

"You're singing at the choir there." Baynes answered, and for once without his chuckling humour attached to it. "But I made a judgment, Lestrade. And I weighed the people who had died under the Tiger against a single man."

"A single man who had no friend nor ally." Geoffrey said bitterly. "_Why_ are you still here?" He demanded. "The bloody _Tiger of San Murillo_ wasn't enough to get you a desk straight at the Home Office, next to the Chief Secretary's potted fern?"

"When is it ever enough, Lestrade?"

It was as if the sun had passed behind a cloud in the room. The honesty shivered. Geoffrey's hands closed around his teacup again, but made no move to pick it up.

He glanced down at the stitched cutwork of the table for a moment, his tea balanced between his fingers. "True enough." He said in the same sort of voice. "But still."

"The Tiger escaped England. That was "enough" for some."

"Bloody hell…" Geoffrey swore without embarrassment. "And saving the life of the diplomat's widow wasn't enough?"

"It was pointed out that if a sacked gardener can do the work of the police, there was an obvious lack in the organisation of the Constabulary."

Baynes waited, but his professional comrade…his rival…remained silent.

"Well?" He wanted to know. "Say it."

"Say what?" Geoffrey scowled.

"Say that for all my clever planning, everything was still ruined as far as my ambitions. The case was solved but not prettily. The Dictator has left our soils, but under his own power not ours. And our country lost a bargaining-chip with Central America we may never get back. Yes, it looks as though the world is headed to another war, but a willing ally is better than an ally out of need. All this…lost until somehow it can be salvaged, and it will be hands other than mine that does the salvaging."

Geoffrey looked back down at the cup in his hands. "That's not what I was thinking." He said in a low voice.

Baynes studied him suspiciously, but those dark eyes looked back up and met his without flinching. It was like looking into the eyes of a wild animal; there was no particular recognition of the importance of another man in the look.

"What were you thinking, may I ask?"

"I was thinking," was the quiet answer, "that this case looks as though you're being set up for another failure."

Baynes leaned back slowly until his back touched the chair. "I daresay you're right." He agreed in a calm voice that Geoffrey recognized all too well.

He'd used it himself often enough.


	29. Making a List

Geoffrey left the breakfast room in a pensive silence that did little to hide the fact he had the urge to walk around the estate a few times, just to answer some burning questions in the back of his head.

Telling himself he wasn't on duty didn't seem to be helping.

He cleared the steps and found his oldest son busy frowning at a long plate of marble stretching across one end of the hall to the other. Geoffrey frankly thought it was the most glaring display of wealth outside Buckingham Palace—even the Palace used wood for wainscoting. Mahogany, probably, harvested by a tribe he couldn't pronounce that hadn't been discovered yet…but it was wood…

"Something wrong, Martin?"

Martin looked up quickly, prepared to be guilty at snooping. "Looking at the sea-shells, Tad." He explained quickly. "There's lots peppered through. Take a look." He held out the small magnifying lens procured from the combination of his birthday, the gloom of a broken hand, and nonstop persistence on his grandfather.

Geoffrey obliged, but he could see for himself the tracings in the stone. He got down to one knee in order to better see where Martin was pointing. It looking like small, white scallops lining traceries into the stone.

All right. Geoffrey very grudgingly conceded that the stonework looked like very pretty white lace with the string of slow-dancing shells frozen in time against the iron grey of the base marble. They hovered in the stone like slow-spiraling snowflakes, occasionally translucent against the rising sunlight.

"I wonder what happened?" Martin wondered softly.

"Probably a storm." Geoffrey ventured. "Something that kicked up the soft bottom like a cloud, and when it settled it buried everything else with it."

Martin was quiet, studying the long, slow sweep of time across the wall. "It's still beautiful, like a piece of art."

"That it is." His father agreed. "Have you been here all morning looking at this?"

"No, sir. I looked up the snake for Nick. It's an Aesclapius."

"I don't know the name, just recognized it."

"The book says it doesn't belong here." Martin told him, almost embarrassed.

"It doesn't?" Geoffrey resisted the urge to sigh. If Nick ever survived his encounters with animals, he really would have a promising career as a naturalist…

"Well, it used to be here, but not any longer…" Martin fumbled inside his jacket and pulled out a slim little book—unsurprisingly, considering the subject: Reptiles and Amphibians of Great Britain. "I found it in the upstairs library." He explained.

Sherlock Holmes could find a broken needle in a moldy haystack. Nicholas could find the only exotic species within a hundred leagues of the palace. And Martin, bless him, needed no more than a few minutes to ferret out a book. It was probably because it was made of paper. Martin had a bond with paper…

"I don't like the way it's made," Martin added as if in apology. "His Lordship's writing style's like he's trying to impress somebody, not educate them."

"Plenty of those out there, aren't there?" Geoffrey was unsurprised that their fellow table-guest of the previous night extended his stuffiness to writing. He obligingly went to the page his son indicated. "Yes, that does look like the fellow…" The dramatic artist had depicted the snake with its mouth hanging open. "Can't say I've ever seen them hold their mouths that wide."

"No?" Martin wanted another reason to dislike the book.

"No. We used to scare them to see how wide they'd defense…" Geoffrey cleared his throat at his son's expression. "Weekends at Plymouth aren't very interesting," he explained. "We never hurt them, Martin. Your grandmother would have thrown us in the soup-pot before that would have happened."

"A lot of women aren't fond of snakes." Martin again displayed his gift for summary.

"I don't think it would occur to her to like or dislike one of God's creatures." Geoffrey said carefully. "You didn't hurt something for the fun of it…but she did say those snakes were special. I've never understood why."

"The book says the Druids took them with them wherever they went." Martin offered. "They were supposed to live in every place that had a temple to healing." He was excited. "That's why they have that name."

"They do?"

Some children are very impatient with being raised by much-slower elders. Martin was a different stripe. "Aesclapius was the Greek God of healing."

"Oh." Geoffrey pondered this, slowly rising to his feet. "If it was the Greek God of healing, why were the Romans lugging them about?"

"The Greeks and Romans were always doing stuff together. Sort of like Canadians and Americans."

"Well, that explains that."

"I'd like to read more about it, but not by the Viscount."

"Can't say as how I blame you. Mind if I look at this a bit?"

-

Clea was in the bath when he came in—a moment all men understood as sacred and not defensively interruptible by Man or God. He settled himself into the lounging sofa by the window and paged through the book in question. Nick, of course, was nowhere to be seen but Martin knew where his brother was. He _always_ knew.

Something light and clattery smacked full-force against the other side of the door.

"Geoffrey, find me a comb that's worth the money!"

"Yes, dear." Geoffrey kept his amusement on the inward side of his mouth where it was safe.

"Stop smirking!"

"I wasn't smirking!"

"Like you weren't."

"Do you want your hair combed or not?" Geoffrey was smiling as he stepped inside, quickly shutting it against the draught.

"You trying having hair so thick it breaks combs."

"Thank you, no. It's one of the reasons why I'm glad I'm a man." He took in the size of his wife against that of the tub. "Good thing you know how to swim." He mused. "If this place ever goes up on auction, we ought to try to grab the tub. The Mews needs a new watering-trough for the oxen."

"Aren't you the clever one this morning." Clea leaned back and closed her eyes as her husband found a resistant-looking comb of wood, not shell. He pulled up a stepping-stool and began on the tips of her hair, working his way slowly upwards to her scalp. By now her hair was waist-length; an undertaking for more than one person. "Still no grey in there," he mock-complained. "What's your secret?"

"Marry an older man."

"Ouch!"

Clea chuckled deep in her throat. She was physically recovering from Margaret's birth, but there was a pleasing roundness that said "new mother" and she hoped to keep it a bit longer. "So where are Salt and Pepper?"

"Running amuck somewhere…Martin was parsing the Geologic Timeline in the hallway when I came back up…" Geoffrey concentrated on a snarl. "Found an odd little book written by our friend, His Lordship the Great Trout-killer." Clea snickered from behind a soapy hand. "Identifies that snake you fell in love with—ow!—and Martin's furious because the book says it's not native to Great Britain and doesn't live here."

"Martin can find a cause, can't he?" Clea sighed. "How typical."

Geoffrey explained the book and some of the details about the mess. "He's quite upset." He finished. "I think he still holds the idealistic belief that a person who can write a book has the urge to write a good book."

"He's still a boy." Clea pointed out. "And still imagining the best of people. Wait till he learns people write for fame, glory, and the satisfaction of their own base urges."

"I'll stick to just writing reports." Geoffrey found the three towels needed to wring-dry his wife's hair and on her orders plaited it up damp. It would take the entire day to finish drying, but when it did the effect would be a waving waterfall of gloss that would look painstaking and professional at the night's dancing.

"Reports, my feyther's blind eyes. What you've got in your daily journals is the stuff of nightmares, dramas, and dare I say it, operas."

Clean and momentarily content with life, Clea donned a wrapper and curled up on the lounging sofa. Geoffrey pulled the drapes to allow the warm sunlight into the room. Geoffrey went to the table and pulled out his small notebook. Clea pretended she didn't see him writing things down.

"Hello." Geoffrey said with surprise evident in his voice.

Clea looked. "It looks like they're trying to transplant the first row of the orchard to the front of the estate," she commented.

"…morons." Geoffrey said under his breath. "No appreciation for the labor and care that went into the growing of those trees."

"No…they haven't that." Clea agreed.

Click. Geoffrey set his pencil down and his chin sank into his hand. The other hand tapped against the surface of the table.

"What a mess." He said at last. "I wish like anything Mr. Holmes hadn't set up this particular sort of holiday."

Clea gave a guilty start. "Who told you that?" She asked. It was far more innocent and less damning than "how did you find out?"

"Baynes."

"Oh." Her spirit-level of respect for her husband's companions wobbled. "How did he find out?"

"Probably broke into the guest-book and read through the records if I know him." Geoffrey sighed. "Now it looks like a case of favoritism. I'm not keen on it, Clea."

"Perhaps it's something else." Clea urged. "You needn't be trapped here with me while I'm waiting for my hair to dry."

"I would think you needed some amusement to keep from ripping the paper off the walls."

"Go on, you." Clea pretended to throw the nearest vase of silk flowers at him.

-

Geoffrey pondered his options, and re-checked the time. Holmes would be long-gone to wherever he was supposed to be, unless…

Oh, dear.

The small man stopped in the middle of the hallway (still deserted; still not noon and the rising-time for the majority of these silly guests). He stood there, thinking, but it was a hard go of it.

While he liked the results of working with Mr. Holmes, there was a great deal to tolerate about the man.

And for every waking moment of his professional relationship with the man, Geoffrey Lestrade had insisted—_insisted_ on a stack of Bibles—that it was impossible to put together an entire case on just a tiny handful of facts.

_You needed all the pieces together in order to get the puzzle_. He'd sworn that over and over again.

And now he was beginning to suspect how terribly wrong he had been.

The worst part of it was that he had come to this enlightenment not while he was being a police inspector, but while he was being a civilian on holiday.

_Convalescent_ holiday. That made it even worse somehow.

A sense of dread walked cold little feet up the back of his throat. He found a nearby library-table and sank into the stuffed leather, yanking out his notebook and pencil for the second time that morning.

_* Owner of Arbors married to Lady Woodrow._

_* Both Woodrows not supposed to be owners of estate._

_+Financial secrets_

_* Sir George and his wife: No love lost. He beat her; she would die before she confessed to having the shame of such a lout for a helpmeet._

_* Sir George made wife give up dogs. Cruelty in a way to save money? Purebred dogs weren't cheap. Nothing with status was cheap. _

_* Sir George's widow had connexions. Connexions he couldn't chase away. Like the Viscount._

_* L.M. seemingly without any morals but what is expected of him._

He hesitated a long time, and finally decided to finish it:

_* Sir George's favorite horse being fed arsenic._


	30. Snake?

_Note: readers were right; I temporarily blixed the sons who had been sick. Martin was sick, not Nick. Nick gets sick in a later fic down the road, and my brain jumped the tracks._

Sherlock Holmes was feeling only slightly better than he had the night before. Baynes' missive went poorly against the overall sensation of the morning, and he absently crushed the paper into the fireplace on his way out. Baynes was in effect, baying up the wrong deciduous in this particular case.

And Holmes could not tell him otherwise. Not without tipping his hand.

Watson, good fellow, was following orders to go and enjoy himself for a few hours. He had the feeling that events would culminate this evening…but not before. Sir Meredith wanted to challenge him.

Lord Meredith had a very annoying urge to have an audience, and no one around here rose until it was past noon.

Holmes understood the need to have an audience, but not when waiting for one to happen would cause a loss of time. It was ridiculous to think of it, and yet here he was caught in a waiting game not of his own choosing.

He turned the key in the lock on his way out; Watson had his own copy. With a spin on his heel and a click of the walking-stick he began his way down the hall. The sunlight was in the yellow stage of rising, bringing out the buttery undertones of the supple green ferns sprinkled in large pots against the pale grey and while walls.

Circling a fern the size of an azalea bush, Holmes encountered Inspector Lestrade inside a small, sunny enclosure of a bay window.

The little man's head was down, reflecting glints off his dark head like quartz within brownstone flint. He looked up from his notebook without the least bit of apology and they locked gazes.

Lestrade looked rested, Holmes thought, but he did not in the least look rested on the inside.

"Heading out again, Mr. Holmes?"

Holmes stepped forward and stopped at the nook. Lestrade's notebook was spidered with shorthand on every inch. "There is little to take my attention today." He pointed out.

"In other words, you've solved the case and there's nothing to do but wait for the perpetrator to betray himself. As usual." Lestrade closed up the little book and rested his hand on it in a strangely gentle movement. His dark eyes looked up at him, and the detective was privately amused that Lestrade, for all his brazen confidence in his career, was not fully aware of the effect his gaze had on people. He must have honed it years ago, subconsciously weighed the various reactions around others.

Holmes sensed something in the air; possibly because he had never encountered Lestrade outside the lines of his profession; they were both a little uneasy in this change of rule. Holmes needed to consciously factor changes in his life. In a way this was as if he had been forced to resort to his cherrywood pipe because his faithful blackwood was in the shop for repairs: It was serviceable but awkward.

"You appear troubled, Lestrade."

Lestrade held his gaze a moment longer before replying. "How do you do it, Mr. Holmes?" He asked the strange question bluntly.

Holmes had a feeling a smile would not be an appropriate response. For the first time in their acquaintance, he realized he ought to be treating Lestrade as if he was a troubled client, and not as a rival professional. "Do what, Inspector?"

"How do you have the _nerve_ to pick and choose cases?" The pencil rolled off the top of the book. Lestrade's hand flashed out and grabbed it quickly before it could strike the floor and shatter the lead inside the wooden tube. "How can you decide to say no to someone, even when you know there's a crime attached to the case presented to you?" Those dark eyes appeared to sink inside him, probing for an answer, any answer that would make sense and satisfy. It was a disconcerting glimpse as to how he promoted interrogations.

"There are so many scandals in this place I wouldn't know where to _begin_ an investigation." He finished. "I'd be as miserable as Baynes. No one's going to come out of this clean or happy." He shook his head, concluding his speech. "I can't do what you do, Mr. Holmes. What made you agree to come here in the first place?"

Holmes tilted his head to one side, and Lestrade thought he looked like an eagle; raptors had either pale gold eyes, or pale grey eyes and Holmes was clearly grey.

"To answer your first question, Lestrade, I may know of crimes committed, but I never completely turn my back on a case. I may refuse it, but I will continue to keep my eyes on it unless I am satisfied that the pursuant of the case is against the laws of justice itself." Holmes looked momentarily thoughtful. "And as to your second point…

"You are not bound by your duties, Inspector." Holmes did not answer directly. "You don't have to solve a case just because you see it."

Lestrade was on the edge of saying something sharp, but held his tongue just in time. Holmes was right; it went against his grain, but the damned amateur was right.

"I may leave the badge at home, but it is still with me." He said at last. "And there is a case of murder. I don't like the taste of this, Mr. Holmes. I don't like the fact that this recuperation is on the grounds of such a crime. You can call me suspicious, but the twentieth time someone went out of their way to tell me what an unfortunate accident it was…well, where there's smoke there's fire."

Holmes shook his head. "For that I am sorry." He confessed. "I was as surprised as you were that events unfolded in such a way." He glanced quickly to both sides of the hall and dropped quickly to the other chair. "Sir George had been pressing me for many months to take up a case on his behalf." He said at last. "I had refused his requests because of _his_ refusal to tell me the truth of why he wanted to contract my services."

Lestrade's dark eyes flickered a bit in interest. He leaned slightly backward into the padded chair and folded his hands beneath his arms. "Many months?" He repeated.

"Since September."

"That long? That's…!" Lestrade scowled. "This doesn't make much sense to me, Mr. Holmes. Why? What did he say he needed your services for?"

"He believed, if one might suspend their belief, that someone might be trying to steal the jewels in his wife's possessions." Holmes glanced down, lifting his fingers to examine the nails. "It was a piteous example of baldfaced lying, Inspector." Displeasure tightened his thin lips even now. "I only agreed to this latest invitation because it appeared his nerve had finally cracked. He had sent a wire promising to be completely forthcoming to me if only I would attend before the end of this week."

"In other words, the insurance on the pieces might be worth a tidy sum."

"Tidy enough to make a greedy man temporarily content with his lot in life." Holmes felt the dissatisfaction tingle within and tried to compensate by staring out the lead-glazed windows. "As I said, he had hopes that I would attend before the end of this week."

"The…_oh_." Lestrade grimaced. "Oh." He reached up and rubbed at a sudden throb at his temples. "I get the feeling I'm only just beginning at this story."

"I arranged to invite your family because I thought it was little more than a paltry example of fraud. Had I known events would escalate to murder I certainly would not have involved your family."

"No." Something strange and small unsnarled in his chest; a suspicion on Mr. Holmes' strange honour had been confirmed.

"I thought of arranging the holiday in hopes of balancing out the accidental debt to your wife." Holmes made a terrible face, his usual expression when faced with the peculiarities of women. Lestrade blandly kept his face straight. Years of practice came in use.

"However did you arrange that?"

"Simple enough. Part of his insistent largess was offering those large rooms. I told him if he was serious enough for my presence, I would be better accommodated with a smaller set down the hall and to allow the large rooms for a family of my acquaintance." Holmes smiled briefly. "The Woodrows are running out of money, and quickly. They could afford rooms better than paying me in cash."

"Why don't you just have them write you up a bill for that expensive marble posing as wainscoting?" Lestrade flipped a sardonic eyebrow to the walls in question. "Got to be worth quite a bit on the market."

Holmes chuckled softly. Watson was right; it wasn't a very reassuring sort of sound.

"And what does that mean, Mr. Holmes?"

"Did you know, Mr. Lestrade, that there are two very different languages in the Dutch East Indies?" He did not wait for an answer, of course. How could he know? "Two speech levels. One is the _nikko_, which is the language one speaks what one is thinking. One uses it when speaking to an equal, or an inferior. The other form of language is the _kromo_. _Kromo_ is spoken to someone when one does not know that person's status; if that status turns out to be higher than the speaker's, and to the elderly. _Kromo_ is an acquired skill and takes many years of practice."

"Sounds a bit like being English." Lestrade answered evenly.

"Quite. Only instead of _nikko_ and _kromo_, we say '_common'_ and '_proper_.'" Holmes heaved a mighty sigh. "The late Sir George insisted on speaking with the highest degree of English as if it were a weapon of conferred authority in the middle of a small country with himself as ruler and I a petitioner. Not a single finely-turned phrase in his vocabulary could change the fact that his lies were as transparent as rice-paper."

Lestrade pulled out his cigarette-case and offered one to Holmes before he took one for himself. It was his way of trying to collect his thoughts.

Conversing with Holmes meant you'd have a strange little nugget thrown into the conversation with alarming frequency. After several years of this, he no longer took it as a personal snide attack on his lack of education (Holmes mocked his intelligence in other ways). It was just that the man was so bloody smart and unable to stop thinking that things like this leaked out of his brain at every opportunity.

He was better in the presence of Dr. Watson. No doubt about it. When his mind went off running, Watson was there like the grounding-wire of a lightning pole, keeping everything focused and to the point with a single question or a puzzled observation. In Watson's absence, they both rather missed him.

Lestrade decided Holmes was bothered about something, or his mind _wouldn_'t have run off like that. He slowly exhaled.

"If Sir George was feeding his favourite horse arsenic to make it look healthier than it really is; if his widow had to give up her dogs; and if he starts screaming about an attempt to steal the family jewels in the fall when many businesses and banks close their accounts, then there probably is a very real problem with loss of revenue." He struck a match and they shared the small flame in silence. "The servants are completely unhappy because there's a genuine cursing well by the folly, and I think they have a right to be unhappy. Impression is that things are a bit lighter in the absence of the Lord of the House..._Load of codswallop_." He decided at last. "Now _how_ did he die, dare I ask? The fact that there's been no idle gossip about it tells me a great deal of bad things."

"He was found dead of a heart attack." Holmes said bluntly. "At the Roman folly some minutes' canter from the orchard. The manservant who was with him said he started at the presence of a snake, and collapsed from shock."

Lestrade drew his brows together. "What sort of snake?"


	31. Always the Badge

Clea was a mother. She was also a woman and the sight of any two males of the species sitting together and collaborating over something was enough to get the flag up.

"What do you say, Brothers?"

Two dark heads looked up—without guilt but that wasn't actually a sign they weren't up to something. "Mamm!" Nicholas beamed over a book that looked to be older than her father. "Do you think the cooks would let us borrow some vinegar distillate?"

Caught off-guard, Clea had to stop a moment. "Vinegar distillate?" She repeated. "You might have to give them the courtesy of an explanation, love. What would it be for?"

"Mineral cultivation." Martin answered with a voice that was too young to be classified as self-important. Yet. "It's in my chemistry book on geological dissolution and precipitation." Just to show, he started paging up the right plate.

"That's all right, dear." Clea assured him quickly. "I took Chemistry too, you know." Albeit, her version of that lesson would have been more along the nature of the creation of rock-sugars on a stick. "But if you borrow something dear, that means you'll be giving it back when you're done. Ask if you may have a bit to use."

"Never mind, Martin." Nicholas had gone on to the other page. "We won't get results for at least four and twenty hours…might as well wait until we get it all home."

"I suppose you're right." Martin was temporarily crestfallen. Knowing him, some other curiosity would get him up and running.

Clea left them with a little laugh under her throat. The sun was up, and it was warm. It was high time she enjoyed it.

She found Geoffrey absently strolling around the spiral garden, his gaze occasionally falling downward as if to examine the pebble-counts on the path or the brave scrap of dandelion that managed to crawl through the gauntlet of gardener's tools. They met at their own pace; he was deep in thought; the distracted sort of thought that meant he was trying to focus on two things at once. Normally he didn't do something that foolish, but when he wasn't sure which issue was the most important, the indecision led to some of the worst prevarications of his life.

"Just pick one and run with it." She said as her hand slipped inside his.

He jumped only slightly. "That's what I'm trying to do." He complained under his breath.

"It can't be that hard, can it? Making a mountain out of a molehill?"

"I'd be happy if either were as _substantial_ as a mole-hill!" He exclaimed a bit more loudly, and glanced about. "Well, what do you think? What's the most urgent? A blooded horse being poisoned for cosmetic purposes, or a man who is _already_ dead and the _identity_ of the snake that frightened him to death is the pressing question?"

Clea was so long silent she felt embarrassed.

"There, you see?" Geoffrey sighed.

"Have you flipped a coin?"

"Not since Mr. Holmes ever-so-kindly pointed out that there is a mathematical probability that the coin will fall face down because the weight on that side is fractionally more…he gave me the string of numbers that went with it, but I stopped listening after the fifth decimal placement."

Clea tried to think. "Well…the horse is alive…"

"I know, but it isn't enough to harm the horse. It was off its feed and the stable-hands started giving it arsenic to plump it back out."

"How did it get off its feed in the first place?"

"Poor food, I think. This place is all window-dressing and painted pasteboard. The money's gone to seed. There should be a wheat field for pasturage, but I haven't seen a single thing resembling green wheat."

"So they turned the fields into a greensward for the guests? I have the impression," Clea said carefully, "that the place ran itself much better in Sir George's absences."

He gave her a long look. "Listening to your informants?"

"It is a cook's duty to know everything under the roof." Clea sighed. "Sensitivity to dairy isn't the half of it."

"That must be a bit difficult for you." They fell into step together. "Knowing is almost a confidence."

Clea did not answer verbally; she merely rested her head on his shoulder as they walked.

Clea loved her husband, but she was weary of the endless number of times she saw people stiffen up when they saw him. It was happening right now; a mixture of distaste and apprehension, as if he could look at them, recognize whatever secrets they were hiding and slap the cuffs about their wrists without a second's thought. It made her angry and sad and worried all at the same time and there didn't seem to be a cure for any of it.

Always the badge between them and the world…

She had been exasperated many a times when he failed to stop being an Inspector and started being someone else—be in the Opera, the park, or going to the market or zoo, he always…remained…a policeman. She'd complained about it, but he'd taken her scolding like water off the duck and said merely, it was difficult for him to not be a policeman.

The truth was, the world wouldn't let him. Or Mr. Bradstreet or any of the other Inspectors. What had seemed like clannishness was partially self-protection. They seemed more like themselves when they were amongst themselves. It was a great pity.

Clea did not know that her presence softened the reactions of people about them. Without her some of the glances were very formal indeed. Geoffrey wouldn't tell her if she asked, either. He didn't want her to think like she had to alleviate what for him was a daily experience.

"Are you in the case, love?" She asked at last.

"No." He answered just as slowly. "But I'll do my blue best to see that nothing gets to a lower mark around here." He toed a windfallen twig out of the path before her skirt-hem could get caught in it. "What's got that look on your face, Clea?"

"I'm thinking when we get back, we'll need to have some sort of winding-down." Clea confessed.

"Same here. What do you say we build a fire in the back and burn up all those old scraps…put a few fish on the coals while we're at it?"

"And bring the Bradstreets…we ought to thank them for taking Margaret…"

"As far as I understand these things, Hazel's always happy to have a babe around, and Roger's just as happy to see Hazel happy."

"Merciful heavens…well it won't be too much longer she'll be thinking of grandchildren. Brian's been quite thick with that stockbroker's youngest daughter."

"If Brian's coming, he'll eat a whole haddock by himself."

"He's still a growing boy."

"Boy, my badge…He was wearing his father's stockings when he was ten years old…he ought to hire himself out as a doorman for Whitehall."

"He is rather large, isn't he?" Clea mused. "All right. A fish fry in the garden. What else? Should have potatoes to go with it."

"So long as I get some dulse and vinegar with it, I'm fine." Already restless, he pulled his hat off with the premise of examining the band. "Should invite the Gregsons too. Ever since they took that Irish boy in they've been half-eaten out of house and home."

Clea smothered her laugh in her lace glove. "You are quite the master of backhanded support."

"I learnt from the best…and Gregson's probably ready to spend an evening out."

"Oh?"

"Yes. It's always a bad sign when he complains Mrs. Gregson won't let him get a word in edgewise."

"Oh, for…!" Clea looked both ways before she laughed. "I'd like to see that!"

"You mean you haven't? Just because the woman's mute doesn't mean she can't make her point across!"

"But, dear…not that I want to say anything against one of your comrades…but how does she? Mr. Gregson is a bit larger and occasionally a loud-mouth."

"If the hand-signals don't work..." Geoffrey's voice petered regretfully out. On the other side of the lawn, people were congregating. "Let's go for another ride."

Clea enjoyed the ride out as well as the first time, but when it was clear they were headed back to the folly, she told her husband in no uncertain terms it was his task to separate her from all legless creations.

"You needn't worry." He informed her seriously. "It was cooler last night and it will take them longer to come out."

"I am not reassured."

Geoffrey slouched across the chilly stones and fished into the pool of water with his hand. "I wish I knew what this was about." He said at last. The dripping handful of twisted metal pins scattered like an oracle's bones across the set stones about the little well. "Some of these look like they were good needles once."

Clea peered. "They were." She agreed. "Pricey ones. And there's some of the rougher ones in as well. I'd say all the women know of this place."

"This bothers me." He had spread them out on the stones, like scattered twigs and was studying them with a hard expression. "I'm surprised all this iron didn't colour up the water…there's nothing but rust-bits at the bottom…makes me wonder how long this place has been used as a cursing well."

"Usually? Something has to have happened at the place to turn it into a cursing well…something that goes against nature." Clea perched on the edge of the stone, her skirts spread out before her. "A trust broken…a betrayal of some sort…"

"Even a murder, I'd say."

"Even a murder."

He was silent, thinking.

"At least the well's too shallow to toss someone in it."

He almost smiled at that. "Truth lies in the bottom of the well, eh?" He quoted the proverb. "What gets me about this is, the late Mister had a way of wanting to know everything that was going on with this place…how did he not know about the well?"

Privately, she was impressed that he was able to even touch the things. Each one stood for a point of rage against another person; all were no doubt saturated in the angers directed at that person.

"Hmn." He said absently. "That's odd."

"What is?"

"These needles. They look like my mother's."

Clea didn't know what that meant, precisely, but she bent to examine with him. He was right. Amidst the scatter of wet irons, there was the gleam of brass.

"Those would be a lady's needles." She said. "A lady needn't worry about how her needle would rust in her hand."

He was puzzled. "You mean she doesn't know enough to file her own needle down?"

"I'm afraid not, dear."

"They spend money on high-coin needles because they don't know how to…" Geoffrey struggled to put his mind to a higher plane. As usual, it was difficult for him.

"How did your mother come to brass needles?"

"They were a present from someone…a relative in Sark…" He shook his head. "These look to be much finer." He held one twisted emblem of hatred in his fingers with nothing more than remote curiosity. "Very much finer."

"These are something a fine lady would keep." Clea said it reluctantly.

He caught on. "Afraid you might be intruding?"

"I didn't care for the way they were planning to get their information out of her, Geoffrey. I don't even care if she's guilty or not!"

"You'll get no arguments from me." Geoffrey sighed and sat up. The needles clinked downward into the dripping stones. "Vile business. They can do better than follow a woman around."

"Is that so, Mr. Lestrade?"

Clea had never seen her husband reach for his hat so fast in her life. She was already turning to see what was coming out of the wood behind her.

It was, of course, the Widow Woodrow. Ulla as her escort was a surprise.

They stood up on the automatic courtesy, but something like pain passed across the woman's sharp face and she waved that off. "I am being spied upon even now," she told them dryly. "And would appreciate a few moments where I did not feel like a fish in a bowl."

Ulla was carrying an umbrella against the rising sun for her mistress—her blue eyes twinkled a bit in almost-mischief from behind the woman, a message that said, "here, she's not so bad even when she barks."

The widow spread her riding skirts at the small bench on the outside of the folly. "I came here because I often do to think."

Geoffrey horrified Clea when he gave a pointed look to the bent pins, and then looked back at the woman.

"And that." She said calmly as a standing bowl of milk. "Legend has it, one of my ancestors, the first owner of this land, filled up an old cursing-well that commemorated an act of murder during the last days of Roman Occupation. It made the local people most unhappy. Thus he permitted the continuation of the customs that came with it, but he forbade the use of cursing with ribbons."

"Well, I can understand that, Your Ladyship." Clea said quietly. "It would have been a ghoulish thing to see, hanging on the nearest branches to the well and rotting away in the wind and sun and rain."

"The slower the decay, the slower the curse." Lady Woodrow agreed.

Geoffrey straightened his shoulders at that. "By that thinking, metal rusting away would be a very slow curse." He said quietly.

"Not if one has sufficient hate." Was the serene answer.

Clea shuddered inside her corsets. She didn't know what messages were passing between her husband and the woman before her, but she was certain the language was bitter.

There was a peculiar sort of respect between them flowing about her; the sort of respect that had little trust attached. Geoffrey was no more interested in confiding in her than she was him. And yet, for some reason, they were both talking to each other.

Clea needed all her attention on the matter at hand, but she spent a brief portion of her mind in the future: she thought of what she would ask her husband when they were alone. She had a feeling his personal views on Lady Woodrow would be most illuminating.


	32. Revenge is the Closure of a Case

"There is also," the widow added as if in afterthought, "the fact that my husband refused to come here. He was terrified of snakes and they were known to hide in the cool of the well on hot days."

"Nevertheless, one was the last thing he saw in this world." Geoffrey pointed out with an uncharacteristic diffidence.

"It was, despite the strangeness of Old Joe's story." She confessed. "The serpents of Britain are all small, and the accounts hold it was a large one that was glimpsed in the grasses." Her brow furrowed in a moment's consternation. "Though perhaps it would not have been out of place here by this old Roman relic."

There was a moment in which all three players in the game regarded each other. Ulla was the fortunate one: She was well out of it.

"Your Ladyship is aware that the missing jewels are a concern for a few people." Geoffrey said quietly. "Not the least being those who hold the Woodrow Estate."

"That I am aware." She answered as unruffled as Hazel Bradstreet when faced with a brood of Sooty Boys. "But I am unconcerned as to their worries. They were not the original estate-guards, Mr. Lestrade."

Clea had been watching Geoffrey the entire time the widow gave her little paragraph. Restless as always when forced to sit still, his little finger had been idly stirring about the rusted pins (she thought he was facing an undue risk for lockjaw). At the last sentence, he stopped stirring; his dark eyes went up and she privately winced as they went through the woman. Geoffrey, bless his heart, could not fully control the intensity of his gaze on people. His eyes were just too dark, a little too large, and they moved quickly.

"They weren't." He repeated back to her.

"No." Lady Woodrow folded her hands into her lap. Behind the veil of black lace gloves her skin was oddly browned. "They lost their post when my father died. My husband was persuasive in who would be responsible for the execution of the estates after that point."

"Are the jewels a dowry, Mrs. Woodrow?" Geoffrey had picked up on what Clea had already realised: She did not mind being called 'Mrs. Woodrow' but her title was a source of annoyance.

"They were at one time." She explained. "I am not surprised you were not told the entire story. My husband and I are fifth cousins."

Geoffrey managed to control his wince; not from long-distance inbreeding; it was his experience that family trees with interlocking branches could get vicious with the distribution of property. "I am not here on official business, you realise?"

Her look was silent and skeptical.

He sighed. Clea sighed with him—silently. She didn't blame the woman for not believing him, but her demeanor was a bit high-handed. No one liked to be doubted.

Geoffrey controlled himself to the extent that he moved his hands completely away from the pins, and set his hands upon the hat in his lap where they could be put out of mischief. She wondered if this was the same look he adopted when people tried to get him to do things that had nothing, positively nothing, to do with his duties.

"How may we be of service, Your Ladyship?"

And there it was. He would mouth her hook, but she wasn't going to get his audience for free. He had proven that when he gave her title back.

She accepted that firing shot. "If you have some sway with Mr. Baynes, try to persuade him to find the entire truth of the matter."

Geoffrey didn't blink—a sign he was truly surprised. "What of Mr. Holmes?" He asked softly. "He is not hindered by the limitations of the police."

Clea wondered if Mr. Holmes would ever know the massive and infinite concession her husband had just given to his favor. Mostly likely…no.

"Mr. Holmes?" She repeated, as if Geoffrey had just pulled an unpleasant name from underneath his cufflink. "Mr. Holmes is not working through the official channels."

"That is quite true." Geoffrey answered in the same voice. "I can promise to keep my eyes open—but what if I see something of which you would disapprove?" There was something hiding, coming to the surface with those words…and with his expression.

Geoffrey rarely, rarely displayed his temper before women. He wasn't built along such lines. Common consensus put him as indulgent to their feminine whims the same way he indulged children. Clea knew it wasn't that simple (Geoffrey was more complicated than he realised). But here…he was showing not so much of his usual patience and it was before their ersatz hostess.

And…the widow appeared to know exactly and precisely to what he was referring. It was a single moment going backwards like a pin withdrawing from flesh—a harsh prick with radiating pain, but specific in origin.

"It is a risk, Mr. Lestrade." She answered him strangely. "A risk that I shall take."

Geoffrey nodded once. "I promise no more than you."

-

Alone again, Clea watched her husband vent his temper on a handful of well-aimed pebbles into the forest canopy.

"I don't understand." Clea said as softly as she could. "Why did you look to the well? You as good as accused her of throwing a curse against her husband into the water."

"That's exactly what I did." He whispered back.

"Geoffrey!"

"They're not like us, Clea. You _say_ something and you can find yourself in the hot water. As long as you don't use _words_ to talk with…you can do whatever you want. If I'd said anything she would have been forced to deny everything just to save her face."

"You're right. I truly don't understand." She squeezed his hand. "That's not how I was raised to be."

"Thank God for that." He swore. "That would have been like cutting the wings off a bird." He subsided into mutterings that she could not fully discern. "Fools." He said at last, and so softly she could barely understand him.

"To whom are you referring, dear?"

"No one in particular…no one by name." He grumbled. "She doesn't want Mr. Holmes' help because he's not her people."

"Dear…" Clea stopped, and her hand on his wrist stopped him from tossing further bits of the path into the forest. "Now I really don't understand."

"She went to me because I'm _safe_." He said with no little bitterness. "Mr. Holmes is _only_ from a family of country squires. I don't have the stupidity required to go against her. He's below her in the social scheme of things, but he's high enough that he can move with impunity throughout any circles—low to high. He's fearless, and he's got purpose, and her late husband, who took the rights of the jewels from her, is the one who hired him!" He toed a pebble; it went flying into the undergrowth. Birds took wing. "But as for me…I can't convince her that he'll come to his own judgment on the case…and come to think of it, that might be the worst thing to say to her."

"She's got a guilty conscience about something." Clea agreed. "She might have known that her husband was not long for this world, if he kept making enemies like our table-guest of the other night."

"Good Lord, if that isn't the truth." He sank back, panting slightly from the exertion of sending a storm of geology into the atmosphere.

"Now that you've sent back a cloud of reverse-aerolites, dear…" Clea cleared her throat. "What history do you share with that woman?"

He grimaced to the point his eyes nearly squeezed shut. "What a mess." He announced. "I don't like to think about it."

"I rather got that impression."

"She was the owner of the missing Komodor…the case I was on when we were…" He strangled around the euphemism. "Engaged."

"Oh." Clea said faintly.

"She wasn't helping us because she didn't want us to know that the old, dead Komodor we'd found was really hers…she'd been faking the age of the dog for years and keeping him in the shows…when he was stolen, he died of old age and they stole your father's Komodor to fake up the ransom."

"Oh, dear." Clea summed it up. "And she didn't want to cooperate?"

"Even when I was talking to her…I…" He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned back on the pillar. "Clea, that dog was her life for a long time…I suspected that she wasn't allowed to have any other dogs once Champion died…she took such good care of him…and when he died, she wouldn't even take the body of the dog and have it buried. That dog had been her companion for about twenty years…and she was willing to let him go to the skip once he was no longer alive."

Clea swallowed. "I don't know what to say…except that I am sorry."

"Well, I paid the Constables to bury the dog by the river…least I could do for my own battered-up conscience." Still annoyed—he looked positively sulky—he picked up another rock, noted it was an agate, and automatically put it in his pocket for their sons. That seemed to calm him more than anything. "But that wasn't the worst of it." He said at last.

Here it was. Clea braced herself but kept her lips shut.

"She was afraid of her husband." Geoffrey told her heavily. "When she saw that I knew…she became an enemy. She's never forgiven me for seeing her afraid."

Clea managed to swallow. "Geoffrey…"

"I think I've been trapped." He whispered. "You wouldn't believe the books in her house…I daresay she's read all of them…she's patient as the grave and she's thoughtful. She's thrown me into the same soup-pot as the rest because…"

"Because there's a chance you'll solve the case, and it won't be in a way that gives you any credit or thanks." Clea finished.

"Yes." He said flatly. "She knows enough about procedure that I can't refuse her request for help—indirect though it was. There's Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, and now two police inspectors, but only one of them ought to be here! I'm the happenstance and can you imagine explaining this to the court? How am I to convince anyone this is just a coincidence?"

"We should have gone to Brighton." Clea said without thinking.

There was a moment of shocked silence with the chirr of a wren in the background.

They started laughing at the same time.

"Oh, no." Geoffrey wiped at his eyes when he could get his breath. "No, not Brighton. Nick would be trying to dig up an entire tidepool and we'd lose Martin to the library!"

In a better humor, he offered his arm. In a better humor, she took it.

They made their way back to the main. "What will you do?" She wanted to know. "I for one am content with the length of our visit. We could go home any time."

"I doubt our sons would agree, but I agree we need to get the little one back to us. Much more of a delay and she'll think she's a Bradstreet."

"Heavens." Clea exclaimed.

Geoffrey stopped talking so quickly—and walking—that Clea nearly swung off his arm.

"What is it?" She wondered.

He didn't answer at first, but kept walking—much more slowly than before. Clea couldn't see past the curve of the field.

"They're planting the apple trees by the walnuts." He said softly. "What idiots."

"Don't they listen to their gardener?" Clea wanted to know.

"I think our old driver is the gardener. I can see him smoking up his pipe like a chimney from over here!"

Clea had another thought. It led to another.

"Oh…dear…" She stopped.

Geoffrey stopped too. "What is it?"

"Geoffrey…you said that apple trees die when planted near walnuts."

"Yes." He looked at her strangely.

She didn't trust herself to speak, just looked at him.

He stared back. A cog turned in his head, striking a spark behind his eye.

He lifted his head slowly, and stared back across the lawn.

"Oh…" Was his very faint answer.

"I just wonder, dear…"

"…what they're adding to the hole to help the trees along?" Geoffrey supplied in a nearly-calm voice. "Minerals, no doubt…a few metals…?"

"Let's keep walking." Clea cleared her throat behind her cloth.

"Let's."

Neither of them knew what to say for another hundred yards. By unspoken consent, they were walking back using the widest possible path.

Clea's mind racketed through the small bits of information it had collected since their arrival. The animosity between the dead man and his living wife. The loss of her protectors with the family jewels. The loss of equity into the Arbors. The signs that all was not well with finances.

A woman may own her own property, but it was one thing to make it a legal right and another to let it happen. Clea's marriage began almost the year when women had gained that right…but too many of them didn't even know what they owned; their fathers, husbands, even brothers and sons controlled it all.

If the Woodrows were fifth cousins, then the Lady Woodrow had some legal right to the possession of the jewelry. All that was rendered worthless when her husband put his own fellows in charge of the estate.

She thought of the smiling, charming and utterly untrustworthy Meredith at their table. His teeth had flashed, his eyes had shone, and he had been against Mr. Holmes from the start…but afraid of him. Afraid enough that he transferred his bile to her husband because of past association.

She had a feeling that His Grace might know a bit more about the circumstances of Sir George's death than he wanted people to know about.

Geoffrey had said the little bronze snake of their sons' experience wasn't from here…Lady Woodrow as much as said the same thing…

Clea could think very quickly. She didn't often think of snakes, but she was thinking of them now.

Martin had shown her that book about the reptiles of Great Britain. With a shudder she had sent it on, knowing he could find a nice audience with his father.

The picture had been grotesque, but…

And the author of the book…

And the snake's introduction to the island by the Romans…?

She sneaked a look at Geoffrey. He was a little pale, his eyes unfocused as he tried to walk and think at the same time. She didn't blame him for looking so.

"We ate dinner with a man who will get away with murder." She whispered behind her glove.

He squeezed his hand upon her shoulder.

"He will, Geoffrey! You can't be convicted of murder by frightening someone to death, can you?"

"That I'm not certain." He confessed in a like voice. "I know that it is very hard to convince a court without hard evidence that a person is trying to overstrain a weak person's heart…planting a Greek snake into an old Roman folly won't work. He'll argue that he was just trying to add an authenticity to the relics or something like that."

"Either way, the man is dead and the jewels are missing."

"Missing…but I have a feeling they'll be…turning up…in a few months." Geoffrey paid the doomed trees a significant look. "As soon as the gardeners uproot those dead apples."

"But what does he hope to gain?" Clea hissed.

"That I don't know, but he seemed certain that he would get it…blast." Geoffrey swore under his breath, which was just as well. Clea never blinked at his language, but she was willing to slap it out of him if someone else heard him.

"What?"

"Baynes. He's coming this way."

Geoffrey drew her to the edge of the fountain and they waited for the big man to puff his way up the path.

"Have a pleasant walk, gentlefolk?" He chuckled—but gently. Clea had that effect on people.

"One last turn before we head back to London." Geoffrey did not bother to hide his relief. "Any progress?"

"I was hoping you would tell me." The Inspector said ruefully. "I'm told the unfortunate widow came out of her mourning enough to chat with you."

"We've met before, on another case." Geoffrey answered in a voice as bland as cooked carrageen. "I suppose she needed my reassurance that I wasn't involved."

"Oh?"

"Yes…though she did say some queer things. Not that I pay great stock to what someone in grief says."

"Did she now?" Baynes answered just as casually.

"Yes…I hope her nerves are well."

Baynes fidgeted. His red face grew the redder, and he played with his hatbrim a moment. "I daresay she's better in her husband's absence, if you know what I mean. He was a cold one, begging the pardon of Mrs. Lestrade. Cold and…well…some might say cruel."

"And she was married to him." Geoffrey mused. "I won't waste my pity on him then."

"Queer things, did you say?"

"I don't know how serious it ought to be taken…" Geoffrey hesitated. "Something about the well at the old Roman folly."

"Really."

"Yes…it seems our angling friend liked to go there and hang about the well." Geoffrey shrugged. "She would prefer that not become common knowledge…one gets the impression that Lord Meredith is turning a bit eccentric in his head."

"You don't say." Baynes said slowly. "I can't say that surprises me either. When he's not here he's off in France. But it looks like he might be staying here for a good bit."

Clea was amused that Mr. Baynes had forgotten her presence.

"Is he favoring Lady Woodrow?"

"More like taking liberties if you catch my understanding. He was one of the original executors of the estate before Sir George changed it all over to his people." Baynes rubbed at his chin. "This is a nice business." He snorted. "You have to wonder what Mr. Holmes will make of it."

"Now that," Geoffrey smiled from ear to ear, "is what I do wonder."

-

Mr. Holmes was perched upon one of the stone gryphons guarding the main entrance steps, loading up his pipe. Dr. Watson was sitting by the steps with his bad leg extended. The boys were clustered about him like little chicks and chattering like squirrels. Between the three were several large paper scrolls with dark blue patterns of pigment.

"It's called Gyokatu, Dr. Watson." Martin answered politely. "The Japanese art of fish printing." Taking Watson's expression for puzzlement, he added, "It was founded about thirty years ago so the anglers could keep a permanent record of the fish they'd caught."

"I…I can see that." Watson cleared his throat. "Did you kill the fish, Martin?"

"No, sir. If you're quick you can print them before they have a chance to raise a fuss. But it helps if you've got another pair of hands to hold the fish down." Martin hesitated. "I had to practice on carp for the longest time."

"They're very difficult." Nicholas chipped in. "But I think catfish are the most difficult. They like to bite."

"No, I think pike are the worst." Martin contradicted rudely. "Pike _want_ to bite. There's a difference. Remember when Uncle Robert caught a pike that was being swallowed by another pike at the same time?"

"Oh, yes. Poor Uncle Robert." Nicholas sighed.

Holmes had been puffing furiously at his pipe during this exchange. "Why 'poor Uncle Robert' if I may inquire, gentlemen?"

"The others wouldn't let him count it as two fish." Nicholas explained. "Because it was technically, two fish on the same hook."

"Or the duckling." Martin pointed out. "It was in the stomach of the first pike."

"What a shame." Watson said with feeling. "I'm fond of the ducks myself."

"It was awfully angry, Dr. Watson." Martin confessed. "It was a week before it would even let Nicholas get near it."

Watson was increasingly out of his depth. "The fish?"

"No, sir. The duckling." Nicholas said as if that explained everything.

Watson took a deep breath. "There was a duckling inside the stomach of the fish…"

"The first fish."

"Yes, thank you; the first fish. And it was still alive?"

"It was a very big fish. And it'd just been swallowed." Nicholas clarified.

"But very angry." Martin reminded them.

"I quite sympathize." Watson brushed his mustache furiously and tried to ignore that Holmes' face was well hidden within a quickly-created smokescreen. "Whatever happened to the duck?"

"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth has her. It's a hen, so she lets it eat the snails in her garden."

Watson rallied bravely. "These are fine pieces, gentlemen. What medium are you using?"

"Water-colour, sir. We toss the powder on 'em and they sort of do all the mixing when they thrash about."

"Well I shall be pleased to keep these." And Watson did appear to be telling the truth. He paused to admire the images with a smile. "I believe I have a frame large enough for the big one."

"Ah, Lestrade." Holmes noted. "Are you preparing to leave?"

"We only gave ourselves a few days, Mr. Holmes." Geoffrey told him calmly. "If you don't mind my saying so, you seem to have your work cut out for you."

"Perhaps." Mr. Holmes murmured. It was not…quite…a refusal or an agreement. He turned his long neck and puffed in the direction of the busy gardeners. "I shall be certain to give Lord Meredith your farewells."

"You do that." Geoffrey passed a long, long look with the detective, and Clea had the intuition that the men knew exactly what they were saying to each other.

-

"Now what?" She asked as they waited for the train.

"Now what, which?" He asked as the boys played a ferocious game of tag on the platform. "The case or our plans for the bonfire?"

"Either or, silly." She slipped her hand to his waist and leaned upon his strength. The train was coming slowly.

"I don't envy Mr. Holmes." He said at last. "He knows full well what's happening…and if I know him, he's going to ensure some sort of justice is going to occur to our friend the Viscount." He coughed into his sleeve. "I'm well out of it."

Two weeks later, Clea hummed to herself over the breakfast-tray. She took care to do so lightly. Her husband cared little for the high notes after a boisterous night.

"Chipper, aren't we?" He rasped from his tilted perspective off the table.

"You have a day off, and the newspaper is missing its usual woes and misprints." She dropped the paper roll before him.

He made a face. "I don't think I can read anything that small." He apologized.

"Have some tea first."

He did, without attempting the balancing-act of the saucer first. "Is there toast?"

"Two inches to the left, dear."

"What in God's name was that stuff Bradstreet brought around?"

"No idea. Hazel warned me about it."

"God. My head feels like my bowler must've after it was knocked through the Regatta."

"Hazel says a breakfast sets you arights better than any medicine."

"Good for her." Geoffrey examined the toast for the best side to bite. "What's the news?"

"Oh, nothing much. A few sewing-circles are giving a quilt to the Queen…"

"She lets people with sharp things near her?"

"It's a very special and historical sewing-circle, dear. The women have to be at least ninety years old to qualify, and be a widow or sister of a soldier to some foreign war I've never heard of…but anyway, they're old ladies and they probably couldn't kill anyone with a needle!"

"My tailor says he killed a man with a hatpin."

"And chloroform. If that's the case, why haven't you arrested him?"

"It happened abroad about sixty years ago, and besides, he's a Messianic Jew. I think he's been through enough." Geoffrey closed his eyes; it seemed to help him get the teacup to its destination.

"Well in other news, it would seem Mr. Baynes is being promoted."

"Thank God." Geoffrey said with feeling. "What monstrous perpetrator of depthless crime did he—no, wait. Let me guess." Geoffrey leaned back, eyes still closed. "He actually _did_ find the Devil walking around at night and brought him in. He always said he would. Bloomin' showoff."

Clea cleared her throat. "Not precisely. That tip you gave him about the well…"

One eye opened. That was quite an impressive trick. "Yes?"

"He managed to get permission to dig it up." Clea put the paper down. "It would seem there's quite a cache of Roman artifacts at the bottom…pots…pans…a brass mirror…interesting bits of jewelry…" Both eyes were open now. "And seals for some sort of wine-making business." She frowned slightly. "Mr. Baynes of Scotland Yard was quoted as saying, "No crime is too old or unforgotten for the eye of the police."

"He said that? That doesn't sound like—wait a moment. Wait just a hoe-chopping moment! No dead people in the well?" Geoffrey wanted to know.

"I…I can't say. The paper says something about 'some peculiarities'…"

"If it's the _Times_, there's bones. That's one of their favourite ways of getting around an order of silence from the police." Geoffrey gulped down the tea and poured a fresh cup. He was laughing, quietly. "There is a god of justice." He announced.

"I'm not certain I understand you, dear."

"Baynes. Baynes is getting promoted because he found an old Roman dig…probably an ancient act of murder in it…" He was laughing harder now. "Lady Woodrow's family history comes to the fore after all! My word, the man must be chewing on some of those bent pins right now."

"Now I really don't understand."

"Baynes is a prideful man, ma-mel. He wanted to rise on his own two hands without any help from anyone else…that's why he was arrogant enough to try to work alongside Mr. Holmes instead of against!" Eyes sparkling with mischief, he waved the toast at his wife. "The Lady Woodrow is going to be out of hock now that a Roman dig is found on her site…without the squeezing blackmail of Lord Meredith, and Baynes, poor fellow, has been promoted so he can supervise the securities of the dig!"

He was so tickled he forgot to eat. "That whole area was a Roman settlement…once they start on one site, they're going to look for others…and you just wait until someone notices one of those planted Greek snakes are slithering around! Joys and raptures, diggers scampering like squirrels…Lord Meredith's little crime is going to enforce the suitability of the site for Lady Woodrow…! We're going to see a renaissance of business at the resort; money's going to change hands, not a penny of which will be going to the Viscount. The Viscount, I'm betting you a pound to a penny, was counting on Lady Woodrow's penury to give in to whatever horrible demands he would be making of her—probably marriage in the bargain--and Mr. Baynes is going to have his hands full for the next five years!"

Clea thought it over. "Is that Mr. Holmes' idea of justice?" She asked sharply. "A man is dead, and the killer may not profit, but he still goes free!"

Geoffrey sobered a bit, but his eyes were still very much alive upon her. "Mr. Holmes has his ways, dear. I guarantee you he won't end there. It's just a form of justice we'll never know about." He finished his toast in greatly improved spirits. "Thank God he's an amateur." He said for the thousandth time since their marriage. "Can you imagine what he would be like if he joined the Yard? My mind quivers."

Clea thought of the man, and his strangeness. She thought of Lady Woodrow, who had been trapped between the various greeds and cruelties of two men all her life. Geoffrey had seen it for what it was, but had been bound within his duties to overlook it.

But he hadn't…exactly. He had quietly stepped out with a few nudges of information to Mr. Holmes' direction…and now look what happened.

Clea picked up the teapot. "Do we have time for another cup before the walk in the park?"


End file.
